Some Images from Istanbul

Kebabs typical of the town of Urfa, at Urfali Haci Usta

If you come to Istanbul, maybe you're hungry, so you should start having a Kebab or something, while not at Urfali Haci Usta?

You can now think where to go, keep in mind that anyway the day should end at a bar like Lal, on the Asian side: a good place to review what you've seen during the day and what you should try the next day. It has a NY air this bar, so you should be fine, maybe you're a little too tired and need to escape a bit from the Istanbul atmosphere.

Lal, a bar on the Asian side of Istanbul, has a New York-loungey vibe
(for all images credit Seth Kugel for The New York Times)

Well, what to see first? Good question. I would say try for the first day the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, and then the Spice Bazaar (by the way, the image of the Spice Bazaar reminded me of a movie I have seen maybe a week ago, A Touch of Spice).

To be honest with you, I would do all this in the second day: I would go firstly to Hagia Sofia. And truth is, I have never been in Istanbul yet. It's one of my dearest dreams. Meanwhile I'm reading Pamuk and Shafak, and I'm dreaming...

The tiled domes inside the Blue Mosque

Inside the Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar

At the Spice Bazaar

Turkish delight for sale at the Spice Bazaar

(Blogosphere)

Wanderings through Büyükada

Ferry
(for all images, credit Carolyn Drake for The New York Times)

Late on a peaceful night in May, on a quiet island in the Sea of Marmara, I walked alone on a curving street edged by walls dripping with ivy. Behind the walls, palms and red pines loomed above Ottoman mansions that drowsed in the leafy darkness. With no sound but my own footsteps, I continued down a slope that led to my seafront hotel. Then I paused. Ahead of me, in the half-light cast by a streetlamp, I saw a cluster of tall, undulant shapes at the turning. Women, or horses? I wondered. Nearing, I nodded: horses. And then I laughed out loud. How on earth, in the 21st century, was it possible for me, or for anyone, to succumb to such poetic confusion? It was possible only on an island like the one where I found myself: the island of Büyükada, an hour’s ferry ride from Istanbul, a place where time stands still.

So begins a splendid column in today's NY Times about the island of Büyükada, just an hour's ferry ride from Istanbul:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/travel/buyukada-near-istanbul-is-an-island-idyll.html

Sea of Marmara

Marmara seen from Aya Yorgi

Icons at Aya Yorgi

Candles at Aya Yorgi

Faytons

Horse gaze

A wild horse in the woods

Konak

And here I tried a Romanian version:

Tarziu in noapte, mergand pe o ulita in panta, printre ziduri vechi imbracate in iedera, in spatele carora palmieri si pini rosii lasau sa se intrevada vechi conace, mi s-a parut ca zaresc, la lumina unui felinar chior, umbre mari unduindu-se. Sa fi fost femei? Sa fi fost cai? M-am apropiat: erau cai. Am inceput sa rad zgomotos: oare in ce loc bincuvantat de Dumnezeu ma aflam de ajunsesem sa am dileme atat de poetice?

Ei bine, ma aflam pe insula Büyükada, pe Marea de Marmara, la un ceas distanta de Istanbul: venisem cu feribotul, admirand valurile marii si zborul pescarusilor, si acum ma aflam aici, unde timpul se oprise in loc. Nu erau nici Starbucks-uri, nici wi-fi, nu erau zgarie nori si nici masini! Doar faetoane trase de cai, asa cum vor fi fost prin Bucurestii veacului al optsprezecelea, si conace: de piatra ori de lemn. Unele parasite de mult. Pe vremuri multi greci, armeni si evrei boagti isi aveau aici conace de vara. Ii indepartasera mizeriile politice ale veacului trecut. O manastire, Aya Yorgi, imi mai vorbea de un trecut care se incapatana sa isi transmita mesajele. Si un nebun ca mine, sorbindu-le si traind in inchipuiri.

Ei bine, nu am fost eu pe Büyükada, desi tare as vrea. E doar o inchipuire, de fapt inceputul unui articol de ziar din NY Times, la care am mai adaugat cate ceva.

(Blogosphere)

A Touch of Spice (2003)

(http://www.greekshops.com/detail.aspx?ProdID=9789604065332)

Politiki Kouzina: if you are in love with Greek cuisine this is the book for you. There are only a few copies still available, the publisher is no longer operating. And of course, you need to know Dimotiki, otherwise you'll enjoy the images of various dishes, without being able to follow the recipes.

I love Greek cuisine, I love it enormously and I remember the great brunches I used to have at a Greek restaurant in Clarendon, one of the towns from Arlington County. The tables were full of all kind of good stuff, dolmades, eggplant salad (baba ghanoush, if you know the term, though the Greek name is different) and backed eggplant, stuffed peppers, taramosalata and tzatziki, fasolatha and gigandes plaki, souvlaki and keftedakia, and moussaka, cheese of all ways, and salami, black and green olives, fish prepared in many ways, and many, many other dishes. That restaurant is no more, but there are other nice Greek restaurants in the greater DC area (one of them, that I highly recommend, is the PanAm Family Restaurant on Nutley Street, in Fairfax) .

All this stuff is also in the Turkish cuisine, both are very similar (and they have a strong resemblance with the cuisine of all other Balkan countries, Romania included, and also with all countries in Mid Orient). I used to go on any given Saturday night in a Turkish restaurant in Bethesda (also the DC area), they were making there a great seafood chowder, and I was adding a glass of Mukuzani. But they were having also musakka and pilaf, and salads, and chopped meat, and minced meat and lots of other dishes, and sauces, and spices, and above all their coffee, their wonderful Türk kahvesi (I knew it with their Romanian names, either cafea gingirlie, or cafea cu caimac, or cafea la ibric). That's a restaurant that also ran out of business, I miss it.

Which is the best of them? There is only one answer: you'll find it in Istanbul. It's Politiki Kouzina, the term has double meaning. Politiki Kouzina is the Cuisine of the Polis, because the Great City of Constantine, Constantinopolis, is unique: it is THE City, THE Polis. Politiki Kouzina means also political cuisine (or politics through cuisine), as the relations between Greeks and Turks have always been so complicated that everything there cannot exist without a heavy political dimension.

image from the book
(http://www.greekshops.com/detail_image_display.aspx?id=9789604065332)

I watched yesterday a Greek movie from 2003, Politiki Kouzina (the English title is A Touch of Spice): a movie about politics and about cuisine. It's about Greeks who used to live in Istanbul and have been forced to leave for Greece, due to the complicated political contentious between the two countries. They moved to Greece and remained nostalgic for their lost Polis, and a way to keep their distinct identity was Politiki Kouzina: the dishes they went on preparing exactly like in Istanbul. The same spices, in the same proportions, giving the same flavors. Their touch of spice, their Constantinopolitan touch.

A movie calling in mind Cinema Paradiso, full of nostalgia. I have read the reviews to this movie. Most of them were enthusiastic. I'm sorry to say I did not appreciate very much the realization. When you tell its story it sounds great, while the movie itself seemed to me artistically flawed. Maybe too one-sided politically (though very decent), maybe somehow irresolute, like not knowing what turn to take in the unfolding of the plot, maybe some solutions in the plot suffer from lack of consistency.

I am sorry to say that because I am fascinated by Istanbul: I haven't had the occasion to go there so far, it's one of my dearest dreams. And where A Touch of Spice definitely succeeds is in communicating a superb love for the Great City, for the Polis, and I will give you here just a scene which is, I think, the greatest in this movie. It's one of those scenes that will remain in my memory for ever! This movie, for all its flaws, deserve to be watched for this scene. The three personages are gathered at the table (where else?) in their apartment in Athens. And the father is suddenly telling his love for the most beautiful city in the world. They have been forced to leave Istanbul many years ago, their souls still belong there.

(video by demozeno)

(Filmofilia)

Reading Further Black Milk

Istanbul, Haydarpasha Terminal, the last train station in Asia
it has its own djinn and fairies
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcarillet/503654322/)

Reading further Black Milk, I'm startled to find a description that's not far for what I'd say about me: someone split inside, half East, half West, who loves the world of imagination more than the real world; who, year after year, has been worn down by useless paradoxes..., who cares too much about what other people think... in short a personality under construction.

When Elif Shafak says that about her, she completes, you must accept the universe as an open book that is waiting for its reader; one must read each day, page by page.

And a splendid change of replicas, two pages later:

With a sudden urge and zest, I flag down a passing taxi - Come on, let's go - Where to? - To the train station - Did you decide to go to America by train? - No, I just want to go to smell the trains.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haydarpasha_train_station_istanbul.jpg)

(Elif Shafak)

The Photos of Linda Connor

Hagia Sofia, Istanbul, 2005
(http://www.rebeccanemser.com/1990/11/linda-connor/)

I discovered the photographic universe of Linda Connor, starting from a book that I'm reading, The Bastard of Istanbul, of Elif Shafak. Fascinated by her love of Istanbul, I looked for images, and I found a photo of Hagia Sofia that took my breath. And that's the way I entered the world of Linda Connor.

Blind Musician, Kashmir, India, 1985
(http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/suggesting-the-indescribable/Content?oid=1178249)

Linda Connor travels with a camera, not to capture images of faraway places, but to participate in the sense of the sacred that those places embody and evoke.

(http://www.rebeccanemser.com/1990/11/linda-connor/)

Apollo, Mt. Nemrut, Turkey, 1992
(http://www.ronslate.com/odyssey_photographs_linda_connor_chronicle_books)

In Connor’s camera’s mystical eye, the world is filled with ancient sacred things.

(http://www.rebeccanemser.com/1990/11/linda-connor/)

Mudra, Mindroling Monastery, Tibet 1993
(http://tucsoncitizen.com/lizard/tag/center-for-creative-photography/)

In the 70s, Connor began to travel with an 8x10 view camera to ancient landscapes marked by ritual and myth.

(http://www.rebeccanemser.com/1990/11/linda-connor/)

Sacred Text, Ethiopian Church, Jerusalem, 1995
(http://www.ronslate.com/odyssey_photographs_linda_connor_chronicle_books)

The landscape photographs of Linda Connor are reminiscent of the romantic and lyrical qualities found in nineteenth century photography. Her subject matter and methods are a link to the past, as if an attempt to recapture an aspect of humankind that has long since vanished.

(http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/collections/permanent/object_genres/photographers/women/connor.html)

(Sufi)

The Street of the Cauldron Makers

Elif Shafak at the top of Kazanci Yokushu

I found on the web a material related to a radio documentary that was exploring the dialectics of tradition and modernity. The documentary was dedicated to a country situated, historically, geographically, politically, at a crossroads between Asia and Europe, Islam and secular values, East and West: Turkey.

The documentary producers invited Elif Shafak, whose books are straddling, like Turkey, East and West, Islamic and secular universes. Elif Shafak splits her time between Istanbul and Tucson, Arizona (where she is teaching Near Eastern Studies at the University), some of her books are written in Turkish, some others in English.

Says Elif Shafak, the secularized, western orientation engineered by the country's modern founder, Kemal Ataturk, taught Turks always to look forward, never back, but this one-way gaze came at a cost: the loss of a national memory, of both the beauties and the atrocities of the past.

She is right, modernization comes everywhere at a cost, the loss of memory.

A couple of days ago I was in downtown Bucharest, at the University. The construction of a huge underground parking has been started there, so the four statues erected in front of the University are no more in their place. Four statues, four founding fathers of modern Romania: Ion Heliade Radulescu, Michael the Brave, Gheorghe Lazar, Spiru Haret. The statues should come back to their place after the works are finished, in several years.

After the statues were displaced, the remnants of St. Sava came back to life: the monastery that had hosted the first school where teaching was done in Romanian language. The four statues, symbols of the beginning of modern Romania, were covering more ancient symbols.

St. Sava Remnants, in Front of Bucharest University
(http://www.telenews.ro/articol/vestigiile-descoperite-la-universitate-apartin-academiei-sfantul-sava-2524.html)

And that happened throughout the whole history of Bucharest. Each new epoch built over the old ones.

Is there a spirit of the place, traveling from epoch to epoch, alive while well hidden, talking only to those who know how to listen? A spirit of the place, a keeper of our collective memory, of the beauties and atrocities of the past?

A documentary movie that I watched a couple of years ago comes to my mind: Invisible City, made in Singapore in 2007. It tackles the same question. Today's Singapore looks like it was brought from another planet right now, this very morning, with the skyline, the businesses, the busy people. No traces, even of its most recent past. A city without history. The conclusion of the movie is pessimistic: the memory of the past disappears while the last survivors are fading. Marks cannot be but ephemeral.

The Invisible City Hidden in Singapore

Well, Elif Shafak believes the spirit of the place resists history. New generations come with new ideas, new styles, new buildings, while their basic ways do not change. To discover the spirit of the place, one should listen to the voices of a street, a single street.

Sea Black Pizzeria on Kazanci Yokushu - the owner is also a passionate domino player

And Elif Shafak took a single street in Istanbul, from top to bottom, Kazanci Yokushu, the Street of the Cauldron Makers: a lane tucked below Taksim Meydan and the İstiklâl Caddesi. And she discovered many layers of history, listening to the voices of the street: the barber, the butcher, the tailor, the grocer, the domino players.

Mehmet, the liberal grocer

Is that possible? There is a splendid sentence at the end of the material I found on the web: according to Proust, the smell of a biscuit dipped in tea can liberate memories long sequestered or suppressed.


(Elif Shafak)

The Wonderful World of Bruno Taut

This is the model of a glass palace, and the name of the palace is Dandanah. I saw it at the exhibition of Modernism that was hosted by the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Dandanah is a Turkish word; Romanians also use this word, to express some degree of trouble. An old piece of poetry was starting like that:

La Bacau, la Bacau, intr-o mahala,
S-a'ntamplat, s-a'ntamplat mare dandana!

I will not translate the verses, it's not that important. I would however note that mahala is also of Turkish origin, and the whole poetry finds its charm in using such words, no more in the current use.

Well, to find a Dandanah in an exhibition in Washington DC was for me a delightful surprise, and I was interested to find more about the author of this little gem. It was a German architect, Bruno Taut, who spent his last years of life in Turkey, as a Professor of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul.

Here is another gem of Bruno Taut: the Glass Pavilion of the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition, from 1914. I wouldn't wonder to find out that Bruno Taut were actually some hero of a story from Thousand and One Nights.



(Avangarda 20)