A Complicated City

Istanbul is a complicated city.  We've heard population estimates everywhere from 14.5 to 20 million people.  For reference, New York's boroughs plus the metropolitan Chicago areas combined fall within that range.  On the low side.  There are so many people packed into this town; it's nuts.  It seems to be divided into three broad areas (this is my very ignorant perception); two sides on the European side, separated by the Bosphorus River, and another portion that is on the Asian side.  We were staying in the Beyoglu area.

When we arrived (finally), we met with Juliet, an ex-pat whom I was put into contact with through her mother.  I met Eve in San Luis Obispo when she hosted me earlier this year on Airbnb. She was fabulous, and I figured anyone as great as that must have a wonderful daughter.  I was right.  Juliet met us outside the Swedish Consulate and immediately took us out for drinks. We met an 80's classic rock cover band singer named Nikki. He was Turkish, but had bleached hair and spoke wonderful English. A group of passing Americans heard us speaking English and stopped to say hello.  We made fast friends with these naive 20 year olds and one older sister (even though I almost slapped on of them for being a Dick American) .  Juliet took us all for dinner at a local place. What a wonderful experience and a great first night.  We didn't get home until 3:30 am, which was maybe not the brightest of all traveling decisions we've ever made.  Because we slept until 3:30 the next afternoon. 

We awoke and made it out to the main pedestrian street in Istanbul that leads to Taksim Square.  Think 16th street mall, but with about 10,000 people.  No joke. Every where we went, there are men standing in front of restaurants, bars, clubs, trying to hand you a menu, get you to come in. We buckled a couple of times.  We ate shish lamb sweetbreads (insanely good), drank Turkish tea and were talked into going into a local bar. A young man was playing acoustic guitar and singing Turkish songs.  It was clearly a local bar because everyone sang along, and we stood out like a tall blonde thumb. 

We were followed twice that night, on that main strip.  Once was by a short, grayed, and bespectacled man.  I looked at him, smiled and nodded and kept walking.  Later we dropped into a book store, where I noticed he was perusing a random book nearby.  We left and continued on our way; we stopped to look at a store and he nearly ran into us, he was so close.  I pulled Kristina aside; he went around the corner to stare at us through a store window, but quickly got bored and walked away.  The second time was on our way home, still on this crowded street.  Kristina had noticed him earlier; we stopped to look at a building and this man got about 3 inches from my face and said something in English before continuing on his way. 

On Sunday we succeeded at waking at a reasonable time.  We made our way to the spice market on the other side of the Bosphorus.  It's an enclosed market with stalls selling open spices in bulk, smaller pre-packaged goods and anything else random or touristy that you could imagine.  The crush of people is incredible.  Here we met Samir, a Syrian refugee who was a lawyer in his homeland, and now hustles spices. He is seeking asylum because he refused to serve his mandatory term of service in the military. 

We got lost and took about an hour to find a Turkish bath; the walk should have taken about 20 minutes or less.  The streets were emptier because it was a Sunday, which was nice.  Cemberlitas Hamami was built in1584.  There are separate mirror entrances for men and women.  The women on our side simply took us by the arm, pointed us in the direction we should go and pushed us off instead of bothering with too many words.  We unrobed and timorously stepped out clad in nothing but a very thin towel. We were once again pushed through a couple of doors and into a large round room not unlike a sauna with an octangular marble slab in the middle, surrounded with small rooms that had fountains with warm water running from the aging taps.  We discovered they included bikini bottoms in the deal, phew.  Otherwise, it was surprisingly liberating to lay on this warm slab, surrounded by relaxed and topless women, topless ourselves.  There existed no feeling of judgment or evaluation, just hot and heavy air forcing us to relax.  At length, a slightly overweight, slightly middle aged Turkish woman waved me to lay on the edge of the slab. She went to her work with verve and determination, scrubbing at my breasts with the same matter-of-factness (and pressure, one might add) that she did my back or my legs.  I was horrified at the amount of dead skin that came off with that first scrub.  A quick rinse, then I was motioned to lay down, where she gave me a soapy "massage."  I can hardly call this a massage, but more of an insistent demand to relax.  She washed my hair for me, which is the first time in probably 25 years that I've had anyone do that.  My newly dyed hair turned the soap and water a startlingly bright purple.  We drank some tea, got a facial, took a shower, and emerged back into the humid, noisy, dirty city.

In a train station, a company uses a spare room to put on performance thrice weekly of Whirling Dervishes.  It's about an hour long and is a religious ceremony.  Five musicians played on various foreign instruments while one man warbled in the most beautiful fashion.  Another five men come out and, for lack of a better descriptor, twirl.  They twirl in very flowy skirts over their pants.  And not a single one fell over.  Between getting only a few hours of sleep the previous night, the rhythmic music and chanting, and the hypnotism of the men spinning, I found myself fighting sleep the entire time.  Luckily, I seemed to not be the only person this happened to.  It was odd, endearing, and fascinating. 

Along the first few days, we discovered that, despite the research I'd done saying that Istanbul was well accustomed to foreigners and the way they dress, it definitely behooved us to cover the fuck up.  If our decolletage was showing, men were pushier, louder and more insistent.  The prices went up and the quality went down. We became targets, in a most uncomfortable way.  By our third day, we were dressing much more conservatively.  There was still no doubt we were foreigners, but our path became inexplicably easier.