Spring Has Sprung

The foggy, cold haze of March seems to have finally lifted and now the city is full of flowers blooming everywhere!

Rumeli Hisarı

I finally got the chance to go visit Rumeli Hisarı--a fortress that was built at the narrowest part of the Bosporus about 50 years before Columbus discovered America. Furthermore, this beast was completed in four months. Four months. The requirement for a huge volume of stone must have prompted the dismantling of lesser local buildings whose materials could be used in the fortress's construction. I think this would explain the occasional appearance of pretty, carved stones mixed in among larger, rougher ones.

Introduction to Istanbul

Ok. I no longer live in Izmir. I moved to Istanbul. Long and complicated story. Too boring to be repeated, so here are new things to nibble on.

I arrived a month ago and settled, in this sprawling city of 15 million, in the heart of the old Istanbul itself: Sultanahmet (technically on the European continent). A three minute walk from my house is the Blue Mosque, and across from the Blue Mosque is the Aya Sofia, and just behind that is Topkapi Palace, which housed the Ottoman sultans for 400 years. Or a three minute walk in the other direction takes me to the Bosporus where I can wander along the ruined walls of the Ottoman fortress. This is the true, cliche, original Istanbul. So naturally, it's become the mecca of ultra-high-powered-in-your-face-Hey!-you-tourist-who's-here-for-two-days-and-you-want-to-experience-the-capital-of-the-Ottoman-Empire-so-we're-gonna-fucking-show-it-to-you Istanbul.

The Blue Mosque

The Aya Sofia

So I live in Istanbul, but it's the Istanbul that is the face of All Things Turkish. My street is a strange pocket of Turkish life within the larger bubble of Sultanahmet, an area largely inhabited by tourists. Many of the old, Greek buildings have been renovated into swanky hotels and restaurants. The concentration of hand-woven carpets per square meter is probably higher in Sultanahmet than anywhere else in Turkey.

But if you wander just past the train tracks of Sultanahmet, you'll find a few streets which haven't yet been absorbed by tourism. And here, in an old crumbling Greek building surrounded by other old crumbling Greek buildings, packed with Turkish families--women hanging out the window to shake laundry or chat with a neighbor who's also hanging out her window; kids playing in the street; mopeds zipping over cobblestones; men roaming the streets pushing

carts full of pastries or fresh vegetables--I live.

My apartment isn't modern. The windows are old and I can hear everything on the street. But it has this incredible, beautiful charm to me. High ceilings with huge crown molding which has been painted light blue. The living room has a raised wood geometric pattern of squares, hexagons and stars in it. A heavy front door with big brass door handles and an old-fashioned keyhole above the newer one that locks securely.

And I leave from here and go to work. I lock my door. I walk past the cluster of teenage boys on the corner, duck under the elevated train tracks, walk through the hoards of street sellers convinced I'm another tourist until I blow them off in Turkish, between the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, and get on the tram. I cross the Golden Horn and, at the end of the line--still in Europe, but further north--I scuttle down into a tunnel that gives me a transfer connection to the bustling hub, Taksim. If I chose to go aboveground here, I would be spit out at a shopping avenue that could be likened to Times Square in New York... maybe. But instead, I stay underground, and go further north, still in Europe. After the quiet, predictable precision of the metro, I arrive above-ground in a shiny, sky-scraper-packed business district. Men and women in sharper clothes than I hurry by. We pick our way through the cars. The cobblestones of Sultanahmet are long gone; traffic crawls over smooth asphalt. I stand at a bus stop and wait to be picked up. The bus zips down hills and grinds up other ones. Finally we reach a toll bridge and we're crossing the Bosporous.

I love this part--because even on the steamy, tropical, condensation-saturated bus, even here, I find myself in awe, looking through the fog-blanket at the fancy estates that dot the hill around the 600-year old Rumeli Fortress. And then, we're in Asia, technically. But it's an event that every bus-goer is extremely oblivious to. They're going to work. And it's 8 o clock in the morning. And the drooping eyelids show how they wish they were back in bed. Europe?! Asia?! There's very little glamour. We take an exit off the freeway and we find ourselves again in a glass and polished steel world of baby sky-scrapers five to fifteen stories tall. Corporations waiting to grow big and strong.

Here, in a city within Istanbul, I work. Again, teaching English, but this time private lessons rather than classes like in Izmir. The change of pace is very appreciated and my students are growing on me. My boss is flexible (I can have a holiday) as well as generous (she's offered to give me free Turkish lessons). She arranged for one of her friends to give me private tutoring twice a week.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I sit across the table from Aylin, my tutor. She's a 35-year old mother of two and she's gone back to school to get her MBA. A smart, busy, ambitious lady, this one, but she patiently sits with me and plows through the endless field of Turkish with me. We communicate in a mixture of 85% Turkish, 15% English. She speaks quickly, and I've given up trying to get her to slow down. I get the gist.

Yesterday, at the beginning of our lesson, she was filling out a survey about life in Istanbul, so after I peered at hers, she gave me my own.

Name. Age. Occupation. District where you live. Do you like Istanbul? Do you miss Istanbul when you leave the city? Do you own, rent or free-load? Ok. Easy enough. I ticked off my answers.

Do you feel like yourself in Istanbul? Uh... Myself. I played with word in my mind. Do I feel like myself?! What kind of question is that? I don't even know where to begin. Ok, next question.

What kind of city do you want Istanbul to be in the future? Again, I'm stymied. But now not because I don't know the answer, but rather because it's not my city. I tried to explain my conundrum to Aylin--"But I'm just here; I'm just watching; this isn't my city..."

I don't remember what I ticked. But God! The questions that nagged me. On such a rainy, foggy, mundane, unglamorous Tuesday afternoon in Istanbul, here I was reminded that I am still, and little more than, a visitor. No matter if it's Europe or Asia.