from Istanbul, Turkey: coming home

No, not to Madison. Not yet.

It’s just that returning to Istanbul felt like coming home. (And returning later today to Paris will stir up those sentiments all over again.)

The familiar. The welcome from people who know you.


We leave Bodrum late. One last breath of hot air up there on the hill and then off, along the shore of this rocky peninsula, where the waters are the color of fairytale seas.

Zipping past olive groves...



... I am reminded of the drive in from the airport, just three days ago: curious then about the town that everyone here loves to remember fondly. Bodrum? I’ve been there! I plan on going back soon. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?


A short flight and then a long, very long drive from the airport to our little hotel on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. Rush hour traffic frustrates even the seasoned cabbie. When it just moves too slowly, the taksi driver will bullishly forge toward oncoming traffic, up through detours, on the sidewalk – anywhere that will move them, us, forward.

And then we are home, at the Sumahan.

Welcome! You have your room again, the same one.

With chocolates and fruits and four windows looking out onto the dark waters of the Bosphorus.

And the distant mosques of Sultanahmet.





And the curving Asian shoreline, which for one more night is our home.





We eat dinner downstairs. Our favorite head waiter is there and he takes charge of our food and wine for the night.











He lives just a little ways away. Two daughters – one wanting to be a doctor, the other – an artist at heart.
He asks my little one (only she’s not so little anymore… sigh…) if she is studying still.
Yes, three more years.
In Istanbul?
No, no, back home.
So you are leaving Istanbul? That is so sad.

Yes, it’s sad to leave a home even if that home was only yours for a week. No more ferry schedules to take note of, no more lights on the bridge to admire.





No more fresh sea bass, daily, no more olives and cucumbers for breakfast.

The last sunrise over the Bosphorus, witnessed from the four windows of our room.





Orphan Pamuk writes about the Bosphorus brilliantly, lovingly, sadly. Istanbul for me has meant a daily intimate encounter with this wide stretch of water. Saying good bye to the city is saying goodbye to the boats that ply up and down, across and back. And to the muted sounds that travel across – mosque chants, pleasure-boat music. No traffic sounds. Only ferry motors and waves slapping the shore. It makes the city a dreamy place, far away, exotic.


One last coffee by the water, one last look out the window. Home to the Bosphorus, now home to the professed love of my life, Paris. You tell your children when they’re little– I love you the same amount only differently. Are cities like children? Or are they like lovers? I’m not sure.

from Bodrum, Turkey: stones and soap

So this is Turkey.

Or is it?

What’s at the core of this place? Where is the real Turkey?

Ocean is all about impressions and in places such as Istanbul and Bodrum (and I'm warning, my impressions are only about these two), I am enchanted: here is a country that wants to fix itself. You feel the energy of progress. After a century of decline, you sense that all those millions out on the streets of Istanbul have had enough of wallowing. Move forward. Embrace secularism (for the most part), respect tradition, accept change.

As my Istanbullus seatmate on the flight here said – it’s all rather colorful, isn’t it?

In the morning I insist on going to a beach. I am no windsurfer, beach toad, or rubber raft paddler, but my God, we are on the Aegean coast. Let’s put our toes in the Aegean.

We get a ride to Bitez, a village further up the coast. A small cove, a stretch of sand – it’s a beach alright. And there are people and there are chairs and umbrellas and it’s all pretty, in a clumped together sort of way.





But wait, where am I, in France? Women, bronzing their breasts? In Turkey? I'm worrying whether I have crossed the line by wearing tank tops (it is so hot right now!) and before me, I have a row of voluptuously undulating female forms, exposed for the world to see?

We walk along the water's edge. On the surface, the shore is all tidy and indeed, the waters are clear and the beach is neat. But look closely under the water. Paper. Plastic. The spoils of a vacationing people.

We want to hike along the coast, toward the next village and the more secluded waterfront. It’s a nice little walk, up the hill, past rocky coves where young men bathe (always, there are 100 men for every woman out and about),





…and then the road ends in some private driveway and you can go nowhere at all. Find me a path! Don’t make me take the highway!

And this is so very real about Turkey: it’s a tough place to walk in. Yes, you can share a road with the cars, the dolmus, the motorbikes. But it’s no fun. It’s me against them and who wants this battle anyway?

So there’s the traffic issue. And will everyone please put out their cigarettes issue.

But how can you not smile at the pretty vines and flowers covering the simple homes...





...and at the calf, nipping at its itchy leg in the small shade of an olive tree?





And is there a friendlier, warmer people on earth?

Oh, such a conflicted nation! The Turkey of many faces. Humiliation and pride, all rolled into one. The feeling of poverty and the desire for success. Trash and litter under the rug, but such a clean rug for you to walk on!

Turkey is at a crossroads and I have great empathy for people and nations that are at crossroads, for the obvious reasons of my own past and my own shaky movements forward (always on the verge of a topple).


We go back to Bodrum and we pay our respects to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

It’s rare that ancient history moves me. Three times in my young adulthood I had visited the Acropolis and three times all I could take from it were the crowds and the heat and the dust. And did I mention the crowds?

The Mausoleum moved me no end.

Imagine this: a taxi lets us out before a gate – as if to a private residence, on a side street of Bodrum. Where is it? I ask. My daughter nudges me. Here’s the small sign. It’s here, across the narrow street.

We pass a ticket window. A woman sits there, waiting, peering out at us, the sole visitors. A man goes in and out of the house – the caretaker? The guard? Her husband? Otherwise, there is no one around.

We knew that the Mausoleum had been destroyed by earthquakes, by pirates looting tombs, by careless excavations. We knew that there would be only the foundation, with a scattering of columns, stones and friezes.

So why is it that it feels so very real?

Across the street, the chant is starting at the mosque. It’s a sad wail and this is a sad place. Great beauty destroyed.





None of it is cordoned off. We walk between ruins of greatness. We touch it, we stare at it, we imagine the earthquake that caused the chariot to tumble to the ground.









Once the most beautiful of all beautiful structures..




..now broken, scattered. And yet – and this is no exaggeration – to be here is to feel more than a thousand years of history rush past you, from the laying of the first stone, through the tremors that brought it all down and the destruction that continued for centuries after -- all in one sitting.


We leave as we would leave a stately residence – through a gate, out onto the street. A laundromat across the street, with racks of clothes, drying outside. Yet another courtyard and another, with vines giving shade over a rickety table. Men sitting on wooden chairs, talking quietly. Cats – the cats of Bodrum, moving around places where there is food.

We come to the harbor where the Bodrum gulets sway against each other. Made of wood, cut after a new moon, because cutting it at any other time would invite worms. We read this, but we don’t know if it’s a folk wisdom or if it is the way of boats and timbers and things that sail.





An ice cream break. When your head gets too full of history and the heat pounds on you from all sides, it’s time for an ice
cream break. I pick "black mulberry" and "bramble."




The sweet juices of Turkish berries.

Revived, we begin the climb back to our hillside white haven, the one with an infinity pool where waters spill out and become one with the hill and stone.

A long pause follows in the cool, quiet waters up here, where the scent of jasmine and honey is strong.


In the evening, we pick a place to eat that is outside of Bodrum. We are given plate after plate of zesty salads and roasted eggplant, followed by pungent meats steeped in garlic, wrapped in pita, with mounds of creamy yogurt for dipping.

And such great baklava.

And Turkish delight with our espresso.





We wait for our ride home. Near the door, there is a display of soaps, locally made. I am dazzled by their fragrance – olives and mint and thyme. For the first time in Bodrum, I want to buy.

The waiter smiles. No, we can’t take your money. Why not? He nods to the corner where the owner sits with his friends. The owner tells me that you should have these. His gift for you.

This is Turkey. Where you go to sleep remembering only the good foods and good smells, the sun on your back, the black mulberry icecream and the gift of soap.

This afternoon we fly back to Istanbul and tomorrow, back to France.

from Bodrum, Turkey: wondrously close and yet…

How could it be that I am less than a mile from one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and I have not seen it yet?

As I said, this day was for catching up on work and reading. Not too stressful, as I find reading by the hillside pool to be, well, exquisite. Oh, that view!





By evening, I hadn’t moved more than ten yards from the side of my deck chair. In the water, then out again, slobbering in the sun screen, turning (wet now) pages . The air here is hot and very windy – torrents of it blowing at you, keeping you from feeling oppressed by the temps.

Lunch? Delivered to my chair. Here, it looked like this:



grilled calamari on arugula




sour cherry ice cream


Decadent, right? I admit it.

Finally, by evening I work up the motivation to go down and get ready to eat. Dinner is at the other end of town and the walk is along a busy road. Hugely uninteresting. I mean, in places that sport one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, you’re not going to be impressed when you pass by a random amphitheater from around 400 BC.





The restaurant, by the way, is wonderful and it, too, has the view of the harbor and castle -- from the other side of town.





But I feel I cheated here as the owners are Turkish, but full-time residents of Paris. I mean, should I praise the sauces (SO French) or the fresh ingredients, brushed lovingly with olive oil (SO Turkish)?

The Ancient Wonder (Mausoleum of Halicarnassus) will be around tomorrow. I hope. I understand it’s so damaged (earthquakes, terrible excavations, etc) as to be unrecognizable. Still, so close… Must get to it. Tomorrow.

from Bodrum, Turkey: where roosters crow and young ones dance

A table by the Bosphorus: coffee, grilled cheese on breads, cucumbers, tomatoes, jams and sesame rolls. Always, the freshly squeezed juice. Breakfast in Istanbul, then a flight south.

In a stroke of good luck, we make the flight to Bodrum (by the Aegean Sea), in spite of the fact that I misread the departure time, thinking it to be late afternoon rather than early afternoon. Ask me a schedule and chances are only 65% that I will give you the right answer.

In fact, we not only make the flight, but have enough time to stop for a goat’s milk pistachio and orange (for me) and pistachio and chocolate (for my daughter) ice cream. One cannot neglect the important things in life. Goat’s milk ice cream is up there.

On the flight, I am sitting besides a Very Friendly person. Frequent fliers do not like Very Friendly seatmates, unfortunately. Never mind that this woman tells a normally fascinating to me story of her movement between Turkey and America (she is a chemical engineer and, along with her family, is part of the significant tide of returnees to Turkey). Never mind that she has some interesting commentary on the Kurds at the Iraqi border. It’s all good, all interesting and I try so very hard to listen and ask questions, all the while thinking – how many more seconds before we land?

We take a cab to Bodrum proper, past dry hills, oh so dry, with olive trees growing nonetheless – their pale gray leaves adding to the feeling of ruggedness and heat.

It is very hot here. How can a place, just a fifty minute flight from Istanbul, be that much hotter? We roll down the windows of the cab and let ourselves be slapped around by hot air – like a massage of sorts, not a cooling one, but still good and punchy.

The discreet hotel is a thing of great loveliness – perched on a hill, away from the chaotic little town (for Bodrum, though small, has the same feeling of frenzy). Stepping out on the little balcony, I see…




… the Aegean Sea and the white houses hugging the little bay, I see the islands – some Greek, some Turkish across the waters. It’s all tempting, all worth exploring, but I have work to do and besides, there is a pool and so we decide that the next day, we will go nowhere and see nothing and we’ll sequester ourselves right here in our lovely white room on the hillside of Bodrum.

First, though, there is the matter of dinner and we walk down into town, past small houses, with people sitting in front,





... and city roosters, too. Past shops, always the shops, everywhere in Turkey, people selling things, we pass all this and wind up at the harbor.









We try to fit into the pulse of the town, for we have heard that the globetrotters have “discovered” Bodrum and they come here to party late into the night and so everything is done at a much later hour, but we are hungry and so we cannot wait.

We find a restaurant that comes with praise. We sit in a small courtyard, with flowers to the side...




... and our waiter is even friendlier than all the hugely friendly waiters of Istanbul and he makes suggestions and they are all good and we eat everything.










We are ready to collapse, but he cannot believe that this should be our plan given that we are in a village that likes to party late into the night and so he slips my daughter a card indicating how they should meet up and dance the night away and I smile politely as does she – for we are the tired ones, the ones who lose their oomph at midnight (except that I know that she is molding herself to me, that were she here with her own pack, they would be out there tasting music and laughter at 4).

All at once I feel protective and maternal and I am wondering if I have become this way because I am so close to the waters that wrecked havoc in my own youth. Bodrum is within spittin’ distance of Samos, the Greek island next to the Turkish coast, where some 35 years ago a bartender and I rode a motorbike all night long and threw plates in tavernas and danced and smooched on a rocky beach and then he asked me if this means I would be his wife and I thought – Jesus, what am I doing??

Too tired to hike up, we take a cab back and the driver gives us each an evil eye (a glass bead), to ward off the dangers of travel.

from Istanbul: Sunday destinations

The ever changing Bosphorus. A morning mist can add another level of beauty to a view that I have now looked at a million times (I need only roll over in bed and face the window and I have this before me):





It’s Sunday. We have been told that the commercial heart of the horn (the old center of town) shuts down. We work from morning til night — a Bazaar merchant tells me. Thank goodness for Sundays.

I ask at the desk for suggestions: what’s a good outing? What do Istanbuli people do on this day?
They take the ferries out to Princes’ Islands.

I’ve read about them. An hour or two from central Istanbul (depending on which island), they offer an escape – a few beaches, no cars, a restaurant or two – that kind of thing.

Great. Do you have the ferry schedule?
The desk clerk hesitates.
Go there during the week. It can get very crowded on a Sunday…
That’s okay, we want to do what the Istanbuli people do. What time are the ferries?

We do the usual: first, ferry across to the European side. There we look for the boat that will take us to the closest of the islands – Kinaliada. We take look at the various boats and ferries and then we see it. The big boat. And a sea of people. The rush to the islands is on.

We are undeterred. If the Istanbuli people regard this as a fun Sunday outing, we want to try it. We join the stampede.

Everyone is running toward the boat and we run as well, though we’re not quite sure why. It’s still twenty minutes toward departure.

As soon as we step onto the boat, the gangplank is lifted, the horn blasts and the boat pulls away. The ferry crew makes the call that there are enough passengers. Off it sails.

Indeed, the large ferry is packed. Standing room only. There are some couples, sure, and some families, but mostly we see young men – groups of them, dressed for the beach.

As always, we are treated super politely. A boy will punch his brother for bumping into me and make him fish for the English word to apologize. (Sometimes they’ll find it, but mostly, when you step out of the hotel or restaurant, English disappears. Not a word.)

We stand at the rail and watch the city retreat.


Within an hour, we are nearing the island. A vast majority chooses to disembark here. Like us, they want a quick escape. We get off with a crowd that is worthy of Grand Central Station in New York. At rush hour.

But it is, in fact, an escape. We have been told that there are anywhere between 14 and 25 million people living in the city. The traffic congestion during the day is unreal! How wonderful to get to a place that has none of this.

Still, it has the crowds alright. This island hasn’t much in the way of beaches, but people make do. They splash with the jelly fish (hundreds of them!) and they take pleasure in getting wet. Just a little break. A dip.





We pause for our afternoon baklava and espresso (it’s become a routine – replacing the latte and scone addiction from back home),





... and then hike up. Mind you, this isn’t a big island – maybe two miles across and a half mile wide. Still, there is a village center and some open countryside.

Most day trippers stick to the village and the beaches. As we climb up, the air becomes hot, still. And you have this feeling of eyes peering at you from behind bushes and dry grasses. That’s because there are eyes peering at you. Every couple of hundred meters you’ll see the flash of kerchief. Young men, smooching away with their women. It still takes getting used to: the guy in western clothes – jeans, t-shirt, maybe swimming trunks and the woman in an ankle-length skirt, maybe with a coat over it and a head wrapped tightly with a scarf.

The views from the walk up are predictably stunning. The city in the distance, a few sailboats, freighters, ferries, and the mountains of western Turkey somewhere in the hazy horizon.





But it’s hot up there and so we head back to town, past horse-pulled wagons delivering water,





…past kids, couples, stray cats, past cafes with men playing cards and games that I cannot recognize, drinking tea, talking,





…all the way to the ferry. True, the schedule says we have more than an hour til the next one, but lo! There is a boat and there are people rushing to it and so we join the pack, because joining the pack has served us well thus far and we’re all running again, because this boat is about to pull away toward who knows where.

On board, we are reassured that we are indeed heading to Istanbul and so once again we squeeze ourselves up there toward the rail, to avoid all those men (and a handful of women, but really, mostly men) puffing away at their cigarettes.

There is a stir. Passengers are leaning over the rails, pointing, smiling. Dolphins. One leap, another. People are guiding us to look this way, to see better.

Eventually we settle on a bench and do some people watching.








And always there are the tea drinkers as the ferry bar tender makes his rounds, not with beer, not with coke, but with glasses of tea and cups of orange juice.





And finally, we are back in Istanbul...





Landing seemingly close to our dinner place, and yet, the fact that we are in downtown Istanbul means that we are not close at all, because maps do not properly tell you where you are and where restaurants are and so we spend the next two hours trying to find where we ought to be.

Flamm Restaurant is worth finding. In a back alley, with just a handful of tables hugging the wall, it is run by the nephew of the original owner.

My uncle gave me this restaurant to manage. He’s busy with hotels and restaurants in other parts of the city and country. I have ten cousins, but my uncle, he doesn’t trust any of them. He was his textiles, his family cheated him. So I got the restaurant.
He likes you?
I think he just thought I needed something to do.

The nephew is an easy going kind of guy and he comes over frequently to talk to us.
My uncle hired all the best people for the kitchen.
You’re just getting into the busy tourist season?
Actually, the busy season is winter. Mostly, we serve my uncle’s friends and relatives here. He has a lot of friends in Istanbul.

We eat fried squash patties, smoked fish and mussels in grape leaves.





We go with the choices from the kitchen – meat in yogurt sauce over eggplant puree, pudding for dessert. The waitstaff hovers attentively.





Our week in Istanbul is finished. Tomorrow we fly south, before heading north again. When you’re in Istanbul, it’s hard to remember that Turkey is more than just Istanbul. Time to take a look elsewhere in the country.

from Istanbul: ice cream

Imagine, a cone with scoops of creamy goat’s milk ice cream – one orange, with chunks of candied peel and bits of nut, the other pistachio, packed with nuts, dripping with flavor.

Worth a long hike and a complicated boat ride after a day out on the crowded week-end streets of Istanbul? Sure it is.




The day can well be described as one of confusion. Saturday chaos. Week-end ferry schedules, requiring learning new times and different departure points. The hard way. By showing up at the wrong time and wrong place first. Eventually pulling away from the pier, wondering if maybe we’re bound for the Black Sea instead of downtown Istanbul.



from Uskudar to...??


Saturday in the city.

If you want to write home that you were pulled along with crowds coming in from all corners of the country in a mad rush of what appears to be compulsive buying, you’ll want to get to the heart of Istanbul on a Saturday.

Oh, but the color of it! The intensely interesting wares, the men calling out – actually I do not know what they were calling out, but it seemed full of energy and passion, despite the hot sun.

Old stuff, new stuff. And lots of it.









A detour to a beautiful mosque proved mistimed. When men (and women?) pray, the mosques close. Ten after one, the wailing chants reverberate throughout the city and we know we were done for. The best we can hope for is a quiet look at rows of men washing their feet in preparation for the services. It feels intrusive to even look this far.





We get lost in the markets. This is to be expected, but it seems especially difficult to extricate ourselves from the web of alleys and shops today. We take passages that look unfamiliar, even as the pleas to stop and shop are now just background noise.






In the spice market, we return to our favorite tea vendor. How is it that he is a favorite? No good reason. He had thrust his card at us, made us sniff his teas and there you have it. Friend for life.

One more look at spices,





One more purchase, this one sealed with a kiss (to be fair, he asked permission).

We return by ferry to Asia and hike along the road to our hotel with dripping cones of goat milk ice cream.


At sunset we go down for the first time to eat dinner at our hotel.



meze (tapas like)



calamari



grouper on skewers

The owner, Nedret Butler, a Turkish architect, comes over and chats about how it is that she, her daughters and her husband (an American architect) transformed this warehouse into a restaurant and small hotel (the Sumahan). Her husband moved to Istanbul with her and for years they worked on this together. It was an ambitious project, but the results are magnificent. Having experienced the quiet of a room looking out over the waters of the Bosphorus, it’s hard to imagine staying anywhere else.

An espresso, an ice cream baked in halvah and the day is done. With a warm crunch, lick and a drip.