Istanbul 6

March 14, 2013

Arrived back from my wanderings last night in time to watch Francis I announced as Pope. My hotel in Rome was within five walking minutes of St. Peter’s Square, and I imagined myself in that jubilant crowd. I’d actually guessed that Francis would be a possible Papal name, depending on whom was elected. I also guessed John XXIV. A strange electricity of hope passed through me when I heard the name announced. Maybe this will change the world.

Yesterday was, maybe, too much, but in retrospect very good. I rose early and saw Hagia Sophia. Trying to think of a one word to describe the experience arrives at “overwhelming,” but even that word falls short. Overshadowing. Annihilating. When I stepped under the great dome–despite the crowd and the scaffolding and the din of workers’ hammers-- I burst into tears. I am standing in Hagia Sophia! It was one of my holy places before I ever saw it. I don’t know what to add to the chorus of description, except that everything said is true, and added to that its stupendous antiquity makes it an experience unlikely to find the equal. It was eleven centuries old when St. Peter’s was built. It was three hundred years old when Charlemagne was crowned. The mosaics are ruined, but the fragments reveal that in its glory it was the largest jewel box anyone ever conceived. I will return sometimes to explore, but the first impressions are still vibrant.

Japanese kids raced around, striking silly poses and making faces for one another’s cameras in the holy place. The Japanese are the new Americans, heedless and selfish and clannish and contemptuous overseas, at least in groups.

From the great-grandmother of churches to Topkapi Palace. Unlike Dolmabahce, it’s elegant and liveable, if vast, full of blue tiled pavilions and exquisite prospects over the blue sea and minareted hills. I could live there happily, though I’d need a guide to get me from one place to another. It’s very much a nomad’s palace, a series of gorgeous stone tents under the open sky. The treasury holds, among other things, a diamond as big as a robin’s egg.  Had coffee in the garden, and fed the un-chocololated half of my eclair to two noble cats. Parakeets screamed in the trees in front of Ayasofia, and in the Sultan’s garden. For some reason, this has made as sharp an impression as any human artifact. I sat in the Sultan’s garden and poems began to ease out of me, the sure sign of being at home, the sure sign of the success of a journey. I continued writing in the Sofa, waiting for my meeting with Adem. As I half expected, Adem did not come. Being stood up by the 2nd or 3rd handsomest man in Istanbul is not much of a surprise. So I sought out the Grand Bazaar, which I did not find very pleasing. I left by the wrong exit and found myself in what British novels would call “the native quarter.” Colorful, chaotic, crowded, no English whatever. I was absolutely ignored, which was wonderful for a change. It would have been fun except I had to piss so bad. I found a mosque, which has a place of ablutions, and, as I had hoped, toilets. Nobody looked at me. Perhaps they thought I was one of the Faithful–which, in a way, I am.

Julie Perry from Sydney (now working for a jewelry store here) chatted me up on the walk from Ayasophia to the Palace. She wanted to have coffee. I invited her to the Palace with me, but she begged off and we made a date for beer later. I was not deceived. I knew that she, in the miraculously laborious and patient way people have here, wanted to sell me something. I had no intention of keeping the date. But as I crossed the square heading toward the bazaar, she located me again, and we had beer and a truly nice chat, at the end of which she did, despite my insistence that I would buy nothing and please do not violate my trust by trying to trick me into it, lure me to her store and into the clutches of her manager. I turned on my heel. Later a boy named Ghengis befriended me, saying that he wanted to talk with me to practice his English. He found me trying to but a Turkish cap, and he said he knew where there were excellent Turkish caps, so I went with him– to the very jewelry store where Julie had brought me before. Angrily, I showed him her card. He had the decency to be abashed.

The task is to find a medium between the cynical belief that everyone is trying to take advantage of you and the folly of thinking they’re not.

Returned to the basilica cistern, wanting those photos back.

Ate supper at Somazen Restaurant, Kebap and Grill on some incredibly narrow street above the Blue Mosque. Cars were all the time backing each other up and down the street, for a car was parked in it, and in even if there weren’t, two cars could not pass each other in the strait. One of the waiters jumped up and down on the car’s bumper, to punish it for being in the way. As I ate, the restaurant received delivery of a new range. The range was too big to go through the kitchen door, so, as I was leaving, the men were disassembling the bar in order to get the equipment into the kitchen. It was a good meal, but in less than an hour I was violently ill. I found a quiet hill behind some billboards–perhaps the only isolated place in this teeming city–and vomited copiously. Having vomited, I went out on the street and found the cap I was looking for. Osame quizzed me about my activities of the day, and so to the room, to watch the Pope.