Out of town

Joseph Heller once defended his novel 'Catch 22' with the line, "I haven't written anything better, but nor has anyone else." Its difficult not to feel the same about Istanbul, sitting across two continents, being a great mixture of the two cultures, Middle Eastern and European. In essence it has the salient elements of Middle Eastern culture executed with a more European efficiency. One of the first things that strikes you, especially when travelling backwards from Damascus, is its cleanliness. Where Damascus (at least the old town) can be dusty and noisy. Istanbul is clean. The traffic is still heavy, and I remember cycling in last summer was the only time I witnessed Nick Nason wearing a helmet, but the cars are generally in better nick, and the very efficient tramway that runs the route from north of the golden horn toward the airport is in quite stark contrast to the route buses and service taxis in Syria (although that is not true for intercity travel).
People's dress in Turkey seemed to be more European too as Islam is a prevailing and not a state religion the hijab is less prevalent and the westernised dress more subtle. The best illustration of the contrast between the old and the new in the city, or perhaps even the east and the west, - for me - was a steampowered old Istanbulu, bent double with arthiritis and the sort of character about him that can only be found in a country that has seen such phenomenal acceleration in westernisation as to make him look slightly out of place on a tram to a westerner. This old boy, came stamping and chuffing onto the tram mid rush hour , his back constantly folded under his tweed working jacket so that his khaki knitted hat was around waist height to most other commuters and his arms reaching for a grab rail above or beside him lifted no higher than horizontal despite being perpendicular to his shoulders. As the tram left the station he was rocked one way, still stamping and blowing in turkish, and then back the other as we turned a corner, clearing a considerable space in what had been a very crowded car, before a young turk took him by the arm and helped him, head first through the crowd of jackets, to find a seat.

The architecture is likewise as beautiful as the views and the myriad of mosques and churches scattered across the old town (Sultanahmet) are each differently stunning from the next, and very conducive to lazy afternoons meandering through the history and sampling the abundant local cuisine, from an apple tea and sandwich from the hot dome of the saj (thats the arabic name, and I cant remember the turkish) to a piping Ottoman stew from a sealed clay pot (replete with 'fire show' smashing ceremony) and a bottle of the local turkish wine.

Off the coast lies more opportunity for slow days on the Prince's Isles. An hour and a half away from the European shore, are these beautiful, and well preserved little islands, populated, it seems, by the wealthier Istanbulus in the summer, and serviced by horse drawn carts and stunning vistas of Istanbul sprawling along the shoreline in both directions. When the sun is out, even on a cooler early November day, it seems they are popular with the townies, many of whom were catching the ferry back to the city with us late on Sunday night, dragging their luggage behind them, after an easy few days, out of the pollution (not that there was much in the old city, sitting as it does on the sea front). In fact it is rather strange to someone who has only known large cities to be heavily landlocked, to wake in a hotel room to a chorus of seagulls and with, in one direction a magnificent view of the Sea of Maramara as it bends into the Bosphorous and in the other, one of the major relgious and historical landmarks in the city rising up in front of the town around it. In that way Istanbul is an anomoly, and a wonderfully attractive one at that. It is cosmopolitan in a most modern sense, with the gentle intertwining of Islam and Christianity over the last fifteen hundred years, a delightful fusion of cuisines from around the world, from West from East, all of them with a tale to their origin, from Spice Route traders, to conquerors and returning expatriates it seems that life in Istanbul draws its influence so widely as to be cosmopolitan in a very real way. Not only does its population hold quite naturally a good mixture of cultures (though you may not agree as an Armenian) but the influences of those cultures derive from a variety of sources, and not just mass immigration or conquest, but the gentle ebb of alien influence through trade and travel and other forms of prolonged contact rather than radical change. It is hard not to see Istanbul as a city straddling the cultures that belong to its continents but at the same time, even harder to place it in either.