Precipice
The cry of seagulls is the constant, melancholic soundtrack of Istanbul. The March air is cold and the light soft and hazy. Some tree must be in bloom as tiny and delicate globes of white cotton fall constantly from the sky.
Time feels slower here. Like it is waiting for something or someone to return. It is collected in the cobblestone streets, the bent houses stacked on top of one another, the towers and bridges of the city- layer upon layer of architecture, as sediment measuring out the centuries.
I arrived in Istanbul three days ago. What I thought was a four-hour stopover has turned into a week while I wait for my visa to Baku, my original destination. After 72 hours at Attaturk airport— a place that can make one hour feel too long—I decide to leave and spend the rest of the time in the city.
Through the subway, trams and stone streets I pull my suitcase, searching for the Lady Diana Hotel where I have booked a room. On a quiet street, that looks like the set of an old film, the hotel, modest and quaint, finally appears. It feels as though there has been a string connecting me to the airport and slowly unraveling as I made my way across the city. I enter the lobby and feel it let go, as I check in and head to my room.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I sit on the edge of my bed and look towards the open window. I can see the spires and dome of the Blue Mosque and beyond, the Bosphorous. The sheer mass of the city, its tightly packed neighbourhoods, narrow alleyways, wide boulevards, the river, the sea, the ports and ships all seem to flood into my small room. A melancholy, mixed with restlessness, drapes everything here. It feels like Istanbul is looking for something. I am too.
I stand and walk closer, resting my chin on the sill. The cool breeze carries in the scent of the sea. The fading light is slowly being replaced by an ink coloured sky that seems to glow behind the lights of the city. I begin to think about movement and the heat that comes from the colliding molecules. About how that heat can be converted to light and scattered through the universe. All of it is just shape-shifting energy. Constantly increasing the disorder, or the possibility for new states of order, in the world. Depending on how you look at it.
I think about a handful of months in 1863 when this city was still named Constantinople. I try to imagine the sea port back then, maybe it was just beyond where I am looking now. And i think about the arrival of an Exile in the early autumn of that year. I think about how that brief stay and the forces generated by His movement, diffused a different kind of light. That moment, when He arrived, is the most significant event in the history of this ancient city. I decide that tomorrow, I will walk to visit the House where He stayed.
Eventually, I fall asleep to the sound of seagulls and the occasional mournful call from a ship coming into port.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
There is a tension in Istanbul that swirls around my ankles like the waters of the Bosphorous as it pushes against the shore in waves. Its constant rhythm pulls at me, hinting that there is something more I am not seeing- that I don’t understand. I am lost, and trying to make my way to the House, but the current keeps pulling me down unknown streets, luring me deeper into this ancient mysterious place. I finally concede I will never make it on time by foot.
I hail a taxi and show the driver the piece of paper with the address of where I am trying to go. He seems confused. I am holding the paper with both hands, as though by squeezing it tightly, I can give it meaning. I repeat the address and the words fall from my mouth without a trace of the tall a’s, rolling r’s, and low shhhs of Turkish. We speak to one another like that; me repeating the address and he, responding with hand gestures and a rush of soft, lyrical sounds. He is trying to tell me that I don’t understand how the city works, how the streets connect to one another in ways that make sense. After a few minutes, he simply turns around and begins to drive. We have reached a silent agreement that he is now a comrade on my mission to find the House. In that moment, he becomes my only friend in Istanbul.
After a few minutes, he turns onto a wide avenue that takes us to the top of one of Istanbul’s rolling hills. It is a steep and straight drive up. The sky is a luminous, steely grey, lit by the late afternoon sun. Two and three-story flat faced buildings with large windows, line the street. They are painted olive green, orange, pink, blue and grey. Hanging on tall posts in the boulevard and along the sidewalks, are flags of different political parties. Huge squares of fabric-one even has the face of a candidate-billow out in the cold air. My days here coincide with an election and suddenly I become aware that the city is humming with conversation.
The image is striking. The wide avenue, the huge silk banners waving against the silver sky, all look strangely iconic to me. Maybe it is knowing the history of Istanbul—once the epicentre of seismic shifts in power—or perhaps it is a sense that the election is a foreshadow of greater changes, not just in politics but of identity. Istanbul is after all, a city stretched across both East and West, so if sparks fly from here, they can ignite both worlds.
My new friend turns down a side alley and we arrive in a very old neighbourhood. He stops and points to another street running perpendicular. I begin to understand that it is not one that cars can drive down- I will have to walk the rest of the way. I open the door and pause as I look down the narrow street with tall stripes of shadow and light. We sit together like that, me and my friend, before I thank him, pay the fare and leave.
I walk up and down the street several times, unsure that the number on my paper is correct. The House assigned to it, is quiet, unassuming, and strikingly still. I pass by it three times, before finally stopping at the simple white door. I ring the bell. There is no answer, so I ring again. Silence. I knock this time and call out hello? There is no movement from behind the walls. I look at the time and see it is eight minutes past the closing hour. I ring one more time, hopeful that someone has stayed behind for a few extra minutes and will hear me. I wait; not moving for what feels like the first time since I was turned away at the boarding gate for Baku. Eventually, I realize that this door is not going to open. I have been standing there just long enough to begin drawing attention from curious passersby, so I cross the street.
A familiar feeling comes and the House appears blurry like a soft watercolour through my eyes. Without realizing it, I turned to this visit for an answer of some kind. Maybe I am looking for some greater reason for why I am in this city when I want to be somewhere else. It occurs to me how often life feels the same. I look up the street that leads deeper into the neighbourhood and begin to walk.
I pass shops and groups of school children returning home for the day. They stare at me, wondering why I have come so far away from the Istanbul of tourists. I stop in front of a small mosque. There is a group of boys in the courtyard and I watch them shyly through the stone lattice work. They are talking and laughing, playing some kind of a game.
I find myself in the midst of daily life in this neighbourhood, deep in the heart of the city. I begin to imagine what mornings are like in the homes here. I imagine the people as they wake up and have tea in sunlit kitchens with sleepy eyes. They walk to school, visit shops to buy bread and cheese, go to mosque for prayers, wait for the tram wrapped in scarves and sweaters in winter, they fall in love with the girl they see on the corner just before she turns down her street, they read the newspaper, they walk while daydreaming about the past or the future, they curl up on their bed and let themselves cry, they hold their children’s hands as they cross the avenues, they worry when long trips are taken, they celebrate, they laugh until tears come and their stomachs hurt, they dance. Life continues here on its own rhythm. A place I would never have known if I had not tried to visit the House.
As the sun lowers, I decide to begin my walk back to the hotel. I have a growing sense that my time in Istanbul will change me. Like my own entropy; an irreversible process, with a likelihood of returning to the precise corner of the system from where I have come, in the shape I once was, is so small as to disappear. A measure of uncertainty— or possibility— depending on how you look at it.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
It is the morning before I am to leave, and I am lying on my bed, looking up at the open window. I close my eyes and as though in a dream, I am suddenly in Akka, in a room in another house overlooking the sea. These two cities are tied together; connected through exile. In every way, I know I am on a precipice. I can see, but as a blind person does, running fingers and palms over shapes in the dark, everything is in broad strokes, without definition. The seagulls continue to sing.
The cry of seagulls is the constant, melancholic soundtrack of Istanbul. The March air is cold and the light soft and hazy. Some tree must be in bloom as tiny and delicate globes of white cotton fall constantly from the sky.
Time feels slower here. Like it is waiting for something or someone to return. It is collected in the cobblestone streets, the bent houses stacked on top of one another, the towers and bridges of the city- layer upon layer of architecture, as sediment measuring out the centuries.
I arrived in Istanbul three days ago. What I thought was a four-hour stopover has turned into a week while I wait for my visa to Baku, my original destination. After 72 hours at Attaturk airport— a place that can make one hour feel too long—I decide to leave and spend the rest of the time in the city.
Through the subway, trams and stone streets I pull my suitcase, searching for the Lady Diana Hotel where I have booked a room. On a quiet street, that looks like the set of an old film, the hotel, modest and quaint, finally appears. It feels as though there has been a string connecting me to the airport and slowly unraveling as I made my way across the city. I enter the lobby and feel it let go, as I check in and head to my room.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I sit on the edge of my bed and look towards the open window. I can see the spires and dome of the Blue Mosque and beyond, the Bosphorous. The sheer mass of the city, its tightly packed neighbourhoods, narrow alleyways, wide boulevards, the river, the sea, the ports and ships all seem to flood into my small room. A melancholy, mixed with restlessness, drapes everything here. It feels like Istanbul is looking for something. I am too.
I stand and walk closer, resting my chin on the sill. The cool breeze carries in the scent of the sea. The fading light is slowly being replaced by an ink coloured sky that seems to glow behind the lights of the city. I begin to think about movement and the heat that comes from the colliding molecules. About how that heat can be converted to light and scattered through the universe. All of it is just shape-shifting energy. Constantly increasing the disorder, or the possibility for new states of order, in the world. Depending on how you look at it.
I think about a handful of months in 1863 when this city was still named Constantinople. I try to imagine the sea port back then, maybe it was just beyond where I am looking now. And i think about the arrival of an Exile in the early autumn of that year. I think about how that brief stay and the forces generated by His movement, diffused a different kind of light. That moment, when He arrived, is the most significant event in the history of this ancient city. I decide that tomorrow, I will walk to visit the House where He stayed.
Eventually, I fall asleep to the sound of seagulls and the occasional mournful call from a ship coming into port.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
There is a tension in Istanbul that swirls around my ankles like the waters of the Bosphorous as it pushes against the shore in waves. Its constant rhythm pulls at me, hinting that there is something more I am not seeing- that I don’t understand. I am lost, and trying to make my way to the House, but the current keeps pulling me down unknown streets, luring me deeper into this ancient mysterious place. I finally concede I will never make it on time by foot.
I hail a taxi and show the driver the piece of paper with the address of where I am trying to go. He seems confused. I am holding the paper with both hands, as though by squeezing it tightly, I can give it meaning. I repeat the address and the words fall from my mouth without a trace of the tall a’s, rolling r’s, and low shhhs of Turkish. We speak to one another like that; me repeating the address and he, responding with hand gestures and a rush of soft, lyrical sounds. He is trying to tell me that I don’t understand how the city works, how the streets connect to one another in ways that make sense. After a few minutes, he simply turns around and begins to drive. We have reached a silent agreement that he is now a comrade on my mission to find the House. In that moment, he becomes my only friend in Istanbul.
After a few minutes, he turns onto a wide avenue that takes us to the top of one of Istanbul’s rolling hills. It is a steep and straight drive up. The sky is a luminous, steely grey, lit by the late afternoon sun. Two and three-story flat faced buildings with large windows, line the street. They are painted olive green, orange, pink, blue and grey. Hanging on tall posts in the boulevard and along the sidewalks, are flags of different political parties. Huge squares of fabric-one even has the face of a candidate-billow out in the cold air. My days here coincide with an election and suddenly I become aware that the city is humming with conversation.
The image is striking. The wide avenue, the huge silk banners waving against the silver sky, all look strangely iconic to me. Maybe it is knowing the history of Istanbul—once the epicentre of seismic shifts in power—or perhaps it is a sense that the election is a foreshadow of greater changes, not just in politics but of identity. Istanbul is after all, a city stretched across both East and West, so if sparks fly from here, they can ignite both worlds.
My new friend turns down a side alley and we arrive in a very old neighbourhood. He stops and points to another street running perpendicular. I begin to understand that it is not one that cars can drive down- I will have to walk the rest of the way. I open the door and pause as I look down the narrow street with tall stripes of shadow and light. We sit together like that, me and my friend, before I thank him, pay the fare and leave.
I walk up and down the street several times, unsure that the number on my paper is correct. The House assigned to it, is quiet, unassuming, and strikingly still. I pass by it three times, before finally stopping at the simple white door. I ring the bell. There is no answer, so I ring again. Silence. I knock this time and call out hello? There is no movement from behind the walls. I look at the time and see it is eight minutes past the closing hour. I ring one more time, hopeful that someone has stayed behind for a few extra minutes and will hear me. I wait; not moving for what feels like the first time since I was turned away at the boarding gate for Baku. Eventually, I realize that this door is not going to open. I have been standing there just long enough to begin drawing attention from curious passersby, so I cross the street.
A familiar feeling comes and the House appears blurry like a soft watercolour through my eyes. Without realizing it, I turned to this visit for an answer of some kind. Maybe I am looking for some greater reason for why I am in this city when I want to be somewhere else. It occurs to me how often life feels the same. I look up the street that leads deeper into the neighbourhood and begin to walk.
I pass shops and groups of school children returning home for the day. They stare at me, wondering why I have come so far away from the Istanbul of tourists. I stop in front of a small mosque. There is a group of boys in the courtyard and I watch them shyly through the stone lattice work. They are talking and laughing, playing some kind of a game.
I find myself in the midst of daily life in this neighbourhood, deep in the heart of the city. I begin to imagine what mornings are like in the homes here. I imagine the people as they wake up and have tea in sunlit kitchens with sleepy eyes. They walk to school, visit shops to buy bread and cheese, go to mosque for prayers, wait for the tram wrapped in scarves and sweaters in winter, they fall in love with the girl they see on the corner just before she turns down her street, they read the newspaper, they walk while daydreaming about the past or the future, they curl up on their bed and let themselves cry, they hold their children’s hands as they cross the avenues, they worry when long trips are taken, they celebrate, they laugh until tears come and their stomachs hurt, they dance. Life continues here on its own rhythm. A place I would never have known if I had not tried to visit the House.
As the sun lowers, I decide to begin my walk back to the hotel. I have a growing sense that my time in Istanbul will change me. Like my own entropy; an irreversible process, with a likelihood of returning to the precise corner of the system from where I have come, in the shape I once was, is so small as to disappear. A measure of uncertainty— or possibility— depending on how you look at it.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
It is the morning before I am to leave, and I am lying on my bed, looking up at the open window. I close my eyes and as though in a dream, I am suddenly in Akka, in a room in another house overlooking the sea. These two cities are tied together; connected through exile. In every way, I know I am on a precipice. I can see, but as a blind person does, running fingers and palms over shapes in the dark, everything is in broad strokes, without definition. The seagulls continue to sing.