I'm back in Istanbul after a week away. Isabel arrived for a visit of about a week-and-a-half on Wednesday (her birthday). It's great to see her and to have someone to share this amazing city with. Here's a bit of an update on things since last I wrote, longer than usual since I didn't take my laptop with me when I left Istanbul on the 24th of September.

A week on the coast

I went to a town called Kas, on the Mediterranean coast. (The hook on the bottom of the s indicaties a sh sound; it's pronounced "cosh.") [Editor's note: Some letters in Turkish don't appear on American keyboards. One is the s with a hook underneath it, the equivalent to a ç in appearance. A hooked s is pronounced sh, just as a hooked c (ç) is pronounced ch. In these blogs, a hooked s will simply appear as an s. No attempt will be made to reproduce the undotted i (which sounds like an uh) and the g with a swoop over it, which is not pronounced.]

Kas was beautiful and relaxing. Unfortunately, my camera went on the fritz, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Clear blue/turquoise/green water which I swam in most days--sometimes several times - a sunken city (Holy Atlantis, Batman!), LOTS of sunshine and sunscreen, friendly people, kalamari the size of onion rings, and another friendly Turkish shopkeeper (who had a girlfriend in a suburb of St. Paul-small world). It was quite a relaxing week.

There are three mosques in Kas, and the calls to prayer were like a song sung ensemble. One voice would hold a long steady note while another did a lot of ornamentation. It all echoed off the mountain that pinches the town against the sea. There were also four other calls/songs per day (so nine in all), starting with one before dawn to rouse people so they could eat before the day-long fast for Ramazan (Ramadan), another that also included some kind of short lecture or spoken prayer in mid-morning, an extra one in the afternoon, and (my favorite) one between the sunset azan (call to prayer) and the nighttime azan. It was usually a long soulful solo apparently with very few words. All the extra four calls/songs per day were solos. Only the 5 azans were ensemble. Each azan or other songs lasted about 5 minutes, with extended pauses in between - except the one with the spoken part, all of which lasted about 20 minutes.

I asked the friendly shopkeeper about the extra four each day, and he confessed that he knows nothing about Islam and is really drawn more to Buddhism, which he doesn't practice either but wants to learn more about. He did, however, give me the name of someone he knows in Istanbul who knows a lot about Islam and speaks very good English (my Turkish is getting better, but I just know a few basic phrases). It turns out that the guy he wanted to put me in touch with in Istanbul is Abdullah, the same guy I mentioned in an earlier email, with whom I'd already had dinner. Amazing.

My week in Kas concluded with a scooter ride (great fun!) with Senol (the shopkeeper with the Minnesota girlfriend) out onto a peninsula to see his apartment. Absolutely beautiful. As he dropped me off at the bus station, he warned me about not trusting anybody but your friends here, because all that people want is your money "and they're better at it than you are." An hour later, I got really screwed by a cab driver who took me from Fethiye to the airport in Dalaman. While it's illegal to bargain for your cab fare in Istanbul, it's expected out in the country. Live and learn.

Back to Istanbul

I arrived in Istanbul late, caught a pre-arranged ride to my new apartment, and found that the key wouldn't open the door from the street. This was at midnight. Dark cramped streets, no other place to stay. The guys who were going to drop me off worked at the lock for 45 minutes, occasionally joking with me that I'd have to sleep on the step. (Yeah, real funny.) They rang lots of doorbells, but of course no one answered. Called their supervisor, who just said keep trying. Eventually one of the guys went back to the van and returned with a long sharp knife, which he used to jimmy the door open. (Great, I thought. Now I really feel safe.) The other three keys I needed to get through two locked gates and my apartment door all worked, though, so at least I had a place to stay (and three or four locked doors behind me). The next day, lo and behold, my key worked like a charm, and when I was able to see all around my apartment in the daylight, it's really quite charming. Small apartment with a larger tiled garden that I assumed was for the whole 5- or 6-storey building, but it's my own private space. Other tall buildings surround it except for a glimpse westward at a minaret about 40 yards away. Very rare, the minaret has no loudspeakers on it because it's across the street from a hospital, but to hear the azans from the garden is truly a cacophonous experience. It sounds like I'm hearing hundreds of calls to prayer from all over the city (and maybe I am), echoing off stone and brick. A riot of sound.

My apartment is almost cheek-by-jowl with the Galata Tower, one of Istanbul's landmarks. 360-degree views from the top look out on the whole city, which spreads forever. I'm just up the hill from the Golden Horn, which is like a river that flows into the Bosporus. Within a long and hilly walk to most places that I'll be going - old Byzantium/old Istanbul as well as a really fun commercial and entertainment district that Isabel says reminds her of Dublin.

Isabel arrived a day and a half later. After a long, lost walk getting from the wrong location to pick up the airport shuttle to the right one, I was able to meet her plane at the airport over on the Asian side and way out of town (east of the Bosporus). We celebrated her birthday with a trip to a Turkish bath, where she got the deluxe treatment and came out looking radiant and relaxed. Then a late dinner at Ney'le Mey'le, on Nevhizade Sokak, a pedestrian street with a lot of al fresco dining. Musicians went from restaurant to restaurant playing this very energetic Turkish music which a lot of people (especially those really enjoying their raki, which is an anise-flavored liquor very popular here) joined in singing with great gusto. Things only started to taper off at midnight. I don't know when things ever stop going completely here. I'd read that Turkey is a combination of fun-loving hedonism and conservative piety. Istanbul is, anyway.

Just like the State Fair, almost

Yesterday Isabel and I spent a few hours in Ayasofya/Haghia Sophia, which has to be my favorite building in the whole world. Afterward we went to Sultanahmet Park, between Ayasofya and the Blue Mosque, to wait for the evening call to prayer. Lots of couples there and small groups of friends, most of the women wearing colorful headscarves. People waiting for the azan on park benches, or set up for picnics on the lawn, just waiting for the official marking of sunset so they could break their fast. Blackbirds and crows seemed to converge from all over the city to swirl around the minarets at Ayasofya or to congregate by the hundreds on its lead-gray dome. It looked like something from a Turkish version of the classic Sleeping Beauty animated film. Eventually the calls to prayer started. A boom echoed through the city. (I hear they used to shoot a cannon to mark sunset in Ramazan. In Kas I could see that there at least, now they shoot off one of those loud fireworks with the single bright flash that they always do in clusters on the 4th of July back home, the kind with the really percussive sound.) And then, as the calls to prayer continued, we heard people breaking open their picnics and enjoying the end of their daily fast.

We walked past the little Ottoman-house-style line-up of booths on the way to dinner. This was on the site of the old Roman Hippodrome, which is now a boulevarded street next to the Blue Mosque. It was crammed with families, kids eating cotton candy, hard taffy candy on a stick, and roasted corn on the cob. Balloons bent into animal shapes were in abundance. Teenagers walked in tightly huddled groups, laughing and scoping out the other teens. Many but less than half of the girls and women wore the colored scarves, a few wore black chadors. Men with long knives slivered meat off of huge broiling chunks of lamb or beef. Some booths sold juice they were squeezing fresh from huge piles of oranges and pomegranates. Some booths were set up to give information on new products. Just like "the Great Minnesota Get-Together" but with a decidedly Islamic twist. (Update from a previous email: if this was also a place for the poor to come and get a free meal as an act of Ramazan charity, I couldn't tell.)

As Isabel and I had a simple dinner on a restaurant terrace we listened later to the nighttime azan. It's remarkable what breath control the muezzin have. It's really quite astonishing how long they can hold and ornament a note. The azans are "serious acts of piety as well as virtuoso performances," as aptly described on a Lonely Planet podcast. Near the Blue Mosque, the main ones clearly can hear each other, and they play off one another, like the muezzin in Kas did. The evening azan seems to have a real celebratory tone (during Ramazan, anyway), and they almost sing it like a round, overlapping each other. I've been reading a book about Qur'anic recitation and calls to prayer and mentioned to Isabel that I can now pick out a few phrases beyond the obvious "Allahu akbar" (God is great) that begins the azan. Isabel couldn't hear me very well and thought I said something about the nearby state-fair-like atmosphere. She thought I was calling it the Allah Block Party.

Not quite, but it had that kind of a feel.

Well, that's enough for now. I think of you all from time to time, especially when I'm alone. I trust all is well with you.

More later.

Peace/Shalom/Salam,