Istanbul, Turkey, Part 2
For a couple of weeks now I’ve been exploring various corners of Istanbul and thought I’d share a few observations while things are still fresh in my mind.
Walking around Istanbul I began to feel the breadth of antiquity here, Western civilization writ large. Icons like the Hagia Sofia embody the sweep of history from Byzantine Rome and Christianity’s rise through the Ottomans and Islam. Other wonders of Istanbul’s ancient past (…when it was called Constantinople…) had been lost to the centuries and were only rediscovered in the 19th century.
The Basilica Cistern is one such place, a vast underground water storage facility built by the Romans. Not far from Hagia Sofia, this cistern stored water from mountains thirty miles away. Fortified with masonry arches, a Roman specialty, the cistern is large enough to explore by boat. There’s even an ancient sculpture of Medusa, strangely positioned upside down.
Tourists have begun to return to Istanbul’s streets since the recent bombings. Chinese, Japanese and Germans are particularly noticeable. They join the throngs of young, fashionable Turks constantly moving along narrow, winding streets and pedestrians-only shopping boulevards night and day, seeming to never sleep. Mixed in with this is the troubling numbers of Syrian women and children, orphans and widows perhaps, who are reduced to scavenging and begging at all hours of the day and night.
Yesterday, I visited The Museum of Innocence, a project of Nobel Prize winning Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk. It’s a realization, an installation of sorts, of aspects of his novel of the same name. Using objects such as photographs, time pieces, identity cards, newsprint, and household items, it visually conveys and expands upon elements of the novel, giving dimension to the protagonist’s history and experience. To top it off, Pamuk himself was there with some French consultants working with him to expand the project.
I’d read a bit of Pamuk though I could hardly say I knew his work. Still, that didn’t stop me from walking over to him and offering my kudos for what he was doing with the Museum of Innocence and thank him for his work. He smiled and thanked me for stopping by. I thought he seemed like a warm, decent man, hardly the aloof writer caricature that can freeze people in their tracks. So, as I left, I purchased a copy there of ‘Museum of Innocence’ and thought I’d go back upstairs for his autograph. Something about that idea didn’t seem right and I waffled enough to veto it. To this day, I wish I had gone back up.
