by Vince Donovan
Sila’s apartment in Cuzguncuk, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, is straight out of some undergraduate art student’s deepest fantasy: a townhouse from the 1800s with a circular staircase in an old funky neighborhood. High ceilings give a feeling of elegance and there are huge windows with chestnut trees outside to filter the light. Broad plank floors worn into a warm smoothness. Paintings, sculpture, books, Christmas lights and exotic niknaks (Greek iconic engravings, Mexican votive candles) cover every surface. At the back of the house is a tiny but lush garden, black and white pebbles underfoot and a cafe table and chairs. It’s a stylish but intensely personal and comfortable home and we’ve been happy to come back here after walks in cluttered Istanbul, noisy with traffic, gray with smog and city grime, the air heavy with seaport dampness. Minarets in every direction but gray, mostly, with splashes of color most easily found in the mounds of spices outside the corner shops.
Last night over raki and an appetizer made from sun-dried eggplant skins (one is told never to drink raki without food), Catherine asked Sila and Aylin what they thought about the upcoming negotiations for Turkey’s entrance into the European Union. It’s hard to imagine two more cosmopolitan women than Sila and Aylin. Sila is an art director for a local ad agency, her girlfriend Aylin is a film editor who wears black-framed architect glasses, plays guitar and has four powerful Apple computers on her work table along with stacks of hot-spun CDs and
a dozen ashtrays. Both are self-made professionals with graduate degrees, highly independent, well-traveled, and adept at the gizmos of civilization: laptops, PDAs, fancy portable phones. Kemal Ataturk would no doubt be proud of both of them but they are dead set against Turkey’s entry into the EU. “They’re different from us,†Aylin snorted into her raki (she always talks with a grad student’s world-weariness). “I don’t see why we should try to be like them.†Sila, who’s always generous and mild-mannered, was even more abrupt. “I’ll tell you: they don’t want us and we don’t want them.†Catherine and I looked at each other in surprise, but said nothing. We’ve been here only a few days and just starting to learn how much there is to learn.
Looking for safer ground I (perhaps foolishly) steered the conversation to religion. The day before we had visited the “new†mosque (~1590) in Eminonu, my first ever visit to a mosque. We sat for almost an hour (it was raining outside) on the endless carpet under a huge dome and I felt the deep atmosphere of worship sink in. Men and women drifted in constantly to pray or just to sit quietly, each having a personal spiritual moment in a beautiful room designed for just that. At dinner, I mentioned that I had a similar impression at the Theravada Buddhist temples in Thailand, watching young couples, tottering retirees and spike-haired punks wander in at any time of the day for prayer.
Christians, I observed, mostly only go to church for the actual service and forget about it the rest of the week. Aylin surprised me again: “I don’t know about that. When I need to think about something, I go into our Armenian church and sit there for a while. It’s always nice.†Armenians have a long and troubled history in Turkey but in Sila and Aylin’s neighborhood there is a mosque, an Armenian church, a synagogue and a Greek orthodox church all within cat-swinging distance from each other.
It pissed down rain today but we went out anyway, crossing the Bosphorus by ferry and, incredibly, finding a cab on the other side to take us to the Aya Sophia. We ran from the cab to the ticket booth and then splashed as quickly as we could to the shelter of the main entry. I’ve wanted to see the Aya Sophia, Theodosious’s massive Church of Divine Wisdom from 525AD, for years and years but now dripping in the narthex with tour guides squawking all around, I felt unprepared. A proper pilgrim would have approached slowly on foot, meditating
on the giant dome, a symbol of Christ’s (and the Emperor’s) dominion over the universe. During the Muslim period we would have stopped at one of the spectacular fountains outside to wash our feet in preparation for entering the holy place, although considering our soggy state maybe this was unnecessary. But I just didn’t feel ready to go in. We inspected the gloomy narthex (itself as big as a cathedral), its giant doors, and worked our fingers into the cracks of the granite and marble walls, trying to find the spirit of the place. Finally
we walked into the church itself, where I instantly felt cold and lost in the space under the huge dome. It looms rather than soars, and when Catherine and I sat down on a marble step we were like mice cowering in a cold and empty mansion.
Empty. The Aya Sophia is a museum now, no longer the splendorous church of Theodosious nor the quiet solemn mosque of Suleyman and the later sultans. Now it’s full of tourists, guides, and multilingual signs. The stunning gold mosaics that were plastered over during the Muslim period are being restored and there’s a wheelchair-friendly ramp up to the emperor’s gallery, but much has been lost. Ataturk tried to defuse a millennium of acrimony over the Aya Sophia by turning it into a museum, a secular space, but as a result it is now merely a huge ancient building. I thought back to our quiet afternoon in the living,
breathing faith of the New Mosque, those Therevada temples, or the mundane Sunday services at the characterless Catholic church where I grew up. God is not in the stones. That’s a big lesson in a country where the endless armies of civilization have fought over stones for millennia.
We leave tomorrow to Troy, Gallipoli and Hittite country. Stones and more stones. On the day of our arrival I managed to set my favorite shirt on fire. Other than that everything is going great.
Vince
Vince Donovan divides his time between San Francisco, and whatever country has the cheapest airfares. His fiction has appeared in the literary journal Ink Pot and in San Luis Obispo magazine. His travel writing has been featured in The Singapore Project, a travel e-zine, and Rip It Up!, Australasia’s largest music magazine. His novel Garage Love, a coming of age story set in the world of Los Angeles underground rock bands, is represented by Scott Miller at Trident Media Group. He is at work on a new novel about adulterous birdwatchers.
For more of Vince’s photos and letters from Turkey, visit his website.
