Istanbul

I was only partly joking when I warned a friend of mine to check the news reports for any crashes for planes on their way to Turkey. My record for making it to Istanbul - or anywhere else, really - has been marred by some record of failure. This time, too, had its pitfalls, but nothing out of the ordinary travel concerns: the coach to the airport broke down, so what would have been a three hour journey turned into a four and a half hour crawl. After that was the obligatory half-hour spent sitting in the plane without moving, but that merely gave me time to figure out how a coach trip from Oxford to the far side of London can take longer than a flight across a whole continent. The resulting headache meant I was grateful for some extra nap time.

I'm pretty sure that my first reaction to Istanbul was to its size. I can deal with big cities. I've gotten quite comfortable with London, but in most parts of London you don't have a sense of unity. Two stops on the tube, and you arrive in a totally alien environment. New York feels massive, but mostly because space is limited and most people live within a very small area. In Istanbul, there aren't really any natural barriers to stop people from spreading the outskirts a little farther outside the city center. It took, on the least crowded travel day over an hour and a half to cover most of the breadth of the city - the shortest measure. And that, of course, was only on the European side of the Bosphorous. The metro trip from the airport to Sara's apartment consisted mostly of me looking out of the windows and watching the city never end. Once I spent several days wandering around, I could sense more of a feel for each of the districts, but until then, it seemed to me that this city just went on forever.

Of course, most of the growth has occurred only recently, and some the biggest reasons to go to Istanbul, the historical monuments, are lumped together in a much smaller area, as the ancients had far less patience to be bothered with commuting. What they did have patience for, on the other hand, were massive fortresses with impressive towers, walls, cannon, and staircases. My first expedition in Istanbul was to one of the siege fortresses built by Mehmed II on the way to cracking open Constantinople like a pinata. Given my interest in history, I felt I had to climb up to the top of each one of the towers in order to appreciate what a fifteenth century Janissary would have experienced. I feel able to conclude that they would have experienced extreme fitness from climbing thousands of stairs every day. The other point of note from this adventure was the entertainment I provided all of the other visitors, who probably, like the guard at the door, instantly pegged me as an American and watched me climbing up and down for an hour.

Once reunited with Sara, I was treated to the promise of my first mosque. It was hard for me to contain the urge to run immediately from the airport to the Aya Sofya, but somehow I was able to contain myself and wait until the afternoon of my first full day. Let me give a little bit of background information. I've heard about this building for most of my life - I remember learning about it while at primary school in England. Being interested in the Byzantines kept the idea alive, but reading the Cambridge Medieval History over the summer and taking a course in Islamic history here really drove it home. For about a thousand years, the Hagia Sophia was one of the most important buildings in the world. The Byzantines knew it to be the sign of their authority, derived in equal parts from God and from the Roman Empire. The Western Medievals considered it with equal parts awe and jealousy, tensions that would drive them to great heights in both architecture and war craft. The Muslims saw it as the symbol of the great oppressor that would always be opposed to them - they had apocalyptic writings showing that the capture of the Hagia Sophia would be a sign of the end times.

The first thought I had upon stepping in was that the place was a wreck. It was falling apart; there was scaffolding throughout the whole center of the church, up to the dome. I shouldn't have been surprised: the place is 1500 years old and this was not the first major reconstruction work done to it. I soon got over it, and was able to be swamped by its beauty. The mosaics, first of all, were stunning. And then the marble-work. But for me, the excitement was mostly from the almost spiritual experience of being connected to the past in such a place.

Though with nearly as much historical renown, it was the beauty of the Sultanahmet Camii, or Blue Mosque, which struck me. Partly it was the novelty of the different architecture of mosques - the Hagia Sophia, though converted to being a mosque before being turned into a museum, is obviously an Orthodox church. But it was also partly the geometric figures which were able, somehow, to be exquisitely delicate but not overly complicated, while being able to fill the massive building but not be overwhelming. I didn't think such a thing could be possible. The only thing that really surpassed it was the Rustem Pasha mosque, but that's slightly unfair. Not every mosque could be built by Sinan.

Moving on from my self-indulgence for writing about history, my second morning brought me to Taksim, an up-scale shopping district. I walked for a very long time on a street which reminded me of Bond street for the crowds and types of stores. Remembering that I could get this where I currently live, I started moving away from the main street and into some of the side alleys. I noticed something which I had first realized in Paris. The farther you walk away from the tourist areas, the more run down the buildings, shops, and people get. In Paris, it took me several city blocks to move from upscale to borderline poverty. In Istanbul it took about a hundred feet. Thirty seconds of walking and I was suddenly the object of great attention from all of the people around me - I had left the tourists behind and was now surrounded by buildings which reminded me of Nairobi or the back parts of Nogales. Impoverished city housing has an odd universal flavor. But the extreme disjunct between rich and poor shook me. I wondered what it must be like to live down one of these back alleys when such wealth is just yards away. It brought home the facade of the upcoming wealth: Budapest had been the same, a city where the extremes are brought very close in the name of modernization.

This trip marked my first visit to Asia, my fourth continent; but, in order to satisfy someone's curiosity, I have to mention that I've still only been on three tectonic plates. I'm not sure it counts, considering I spent perhaps two hours there, but I'm sure someday I'll be able to check it more fully off my list. The more impressive ferry trip led up the golden horn, to the more conservative Eyup district. The local attraction for Eyup is the tomb of one of the companions of the Prophet, something I'd heard about from my Islamic history tutor but was unable to fully appreciate until I got there, bound by tradition not to turn my back on it as I made my way out. After that, the thousands of other graves which line the hillside above Eyup might seem to be somewhat of a letdown; after all, none of them were companions of the prophet. But after the first five minutes of walking up, I began to see the point of the place. The view was wonderful and you would always be very, very close to your family. What more could you ask for?

I believe I mentioned near the beginning that Istanbul is a large city. Having spent three actual days there, I have been assured that I've seen a bare fraction of the place. Along with most of the rest of Europe, Istanbul has made it on the list of places I will have to return to someday. Perhaps in two years, when the Sulemaniye mosque has finished repairs and I'll be able to see Sinan's work at it's largest extant. But there is always the lure of other places: I've heard good things about Tunisia and Egypt, and though I've been to Africa before, never the Maghreb. So many places to go, never enough time. Someday, though, I'm sure.