I can't stand going someplace and being in the high profile, trendy areas and seeing all of the renown sights and popular features. Of course, I do a drive-by or a walk through to get a feel and for face value, to wear the "Yeah, I've seen that" badge, but little time is devoted to such ventures because they turn out to be unfulfilling and expensive, and not much of an impression gets made.
I can't bag on people who do like to do those things though, because I must confess that sometimes it is nice to have a glossy-paged, downy-cotton bedsheet "holiday" and be shown around. Or, at least, it
must be nice.
But I like to show and not be shown, so I'm more for self-exploration. Everyone knows that the real flavor of a place is in the back streets. And not just the back streets, I mean
the back streets. The back streets that wouldn't be back streets if they were near the tourist areas. The seediest, sleaziest, and dubious areas are always where the sharpest odors and lewdest sights lie.
Hot day, cool apartment. I'd rather move around than be cool most of these lazy, sweaty days, so I grab my hat and my bag (to make the journey more uncomfortable for myself, of course :) ) and trot out of my shady alley. Destination? I hate to admit it, but all roads other than the one to work lead to Sultanahmet because I have the misfortune of having all of my friends in one place. Okay, left or right? Right then - I always go left. And then right again.
My path takes me up the hill, past forgotten Ottoman buildings and their forgotten felines. I stop at a mosque, to look at the ancient headstones and splash my brow with water from the ablutions fountain in the courtyard, as is my custom on sweltering days, with the pious old men dumbfoundedly staring at me, the pallid
yabancı (foreigner), from the shade like I was using their fountain as a biday.
I continue down the backside of the hill, down through the growing shantytown. From the top of the hill I could see clear across the Marmara, but as I descend the crystal panorama becomes obscured by cluttered clotheslines and satellite dishes.
At the bottom, dirty children run abreast with İstanbul's wild dogs, shouting and kicking tattered footballs and garbage. Some children have taken to pulling the bricks up from the street, but no one seems to care. Old women shout through barred windows, and sandaled mothers shuffle aimlessly past, mumbling prayers.
I'd have thought that people would be surprised to see a tall, white foreigner with a wide-brimmed hat strolling down their street, but most people don't seem to notice, and the ones who do smile a shy but welcoming friendly smile. I take a left at the empty lot with the comfy sofa. I would sit to rest, but who knows what kind of filth has been left behind.
Past the old sofa I tumble out onto a busy Cerrahpaşa street, much like all the streets in İstanbul - all barber shops, cramped tea shops,
tekels, and secondhand phone shops. I cut across a busy road and duck down an alley where men are loading crates of dusty vegetables onto the back of a truck. Here across the street the tone is different from the crowded family shacks up the hill slope - the dusty, potholed streets cut through a clearly industrial area, all corrugated tin warehouses and parked lorries. I am surprised to find a fairly upscale hotel among the cluttered shipping offices and truckers' shacks with their chicken coops, although it looks like it hasn't had business for a while. The whole area has the lingering scent of wet earth, most likely from the enormous pit nearby that will one day be the metro's extension to Yenikapı. My path takes me out of the city of warehouses and through a neighborhood that seems to be exclusively auto mechanic and accessory shops - a car owner would be able to get a good deal on anything if they shopped around in this area.
Until this point I have been wandering absentmindedly, keeping my direction in the back of my mind. But now I have come to a highway, a bus stop, normal İstanbul again. I dash ascross the road dodging the honking taxis and suicidal
dolmuş drivers to the other side. Now I'm not wandering anymore - the Arabic and Russian in the shop windows tells me I'm in Aksaray. I had always thought Aksary to be the place where I always ate kebabs near the tram station - now I can see that this is the real Aksary, the seedy, gritty one everyone had warned me about.
Here, the streets are narrow, grease-stained, packed with call shops with colorful flags in the window - Morocco, Tunisia, Georgia, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan. For two full blocks, a strange sight: everyone I see is African, but not dark black African - their black skin is made grey by its chalkiness, and they move silently about the streets, in and out of the doorways like ghosts.
As I continue down this street, the detritus of İstanbul seems to me to be delightfully cosmopolitan - Somalians, Arabs, Russians, Kurds, Gypsys, and Turks all mingle casually. The place is unimaginably filthy, however- the street, made hot by the midday sun, sweats the wretched stench of fresh sewage and stagnating food, and the bony rattling of tabla dice and gurgling Kurdish accents makes the place more desolate than welcoming, despite it being thronged with people. I wonder how those children can bear to suck on ice cream in this squalid avenue.
Overwhelmed by the horrid odor of street grease and sewage, I bear right, towards a tree lined street, shade. I am immdiately surrounded by silence, shade, and a feeling of ease on this empty street. Looking up, I see a steeple with an iron cross on its peak - a church. How delightful! I wander towards it and find an embassy-like building across the street from it. Church? Embassy? The barbed linear script tells me that this is an Armenian church, and that the crested gates and regiment of police outside the embassy-like building across the street are protecting the head of the Armenian church in Turkey. Hm. I walk through the gates to the courtyard but am not bold enough to go into the church, so I just enjoy the shade of the courtyard and look around like a tourist. Even though I gave up church years ago, I like it when I find one in İstanbul, because the peacful feeling the church radiates calms my spirit and makes me feel at home in this paradoxical land. Mosques are beautiful but make me feel uneasy - a church is more familiar and welcoming, to me at least. I'm sure my Turkish friends would beg to differ, however.
Another block south under the clotheslines brings me to the railroad tracks, that tired commuter line that, because it was misplaced along the southren shore of the city, is forgotten by all but those who live along that shore and enjoy the foghorns of moored ships. I buy a seltzer and, watching the rickety old carriages grumble past, decide that because the weather has gotten so hot and has worn me down, I'd better just take the train to rest of the way to Sultanahmet.
Of course, it has more to do with my love of trains than anything else. I buy a token and take the train, like those who live on the back streets do.
