The Balcony at the Hotel Nomade, Istanbul

The Balcony at the Hotel Nomade, Istanbul

Our Hotel Nomade in Istanbul, recommended to us by one of the Turkish men with whom Fem works, has clearly marketed itself over the years as a place for single women and other travellers on their own, making it a generally friendly and convivial place to inhabit. 

That is, unless you’re a German woman on a tight schedule, in which case I tested her patience as well as her command of English, so she gave us short shrift and left; I saw her stride determinedly out the hotel and into the street. 

At breakfast we met the American retired ladies who had taught English in Turkish schools many years ago and who came back every few years for a renewal of their love affair with the country, and who were mostly delightfully extravert.  Then there was the wealthy elderly American man proudly presenting his extra-petite, exquisite and extremely young Chinese travelling ‘companion’ to the world, a ubiquitous sight with elderly oil company men.   

But my favourite breakfast companion of all was an über-thin New Yorker whose breakfast consisted of a third of a half of a bowl of fresh yoghurt, black coffee, and cigarettes that should have been Marlboro’s but weren’t.  She had on Jackie O sunglasses so large they nearly overwhelmed her tiny face.  Originally hailing from Canada, Eva, a Eurasian, worked as a graphic designer in the New York advertising industry.  She was remarkably enthusiastic about everything, and had appropriated any number of the young men who staff the hotel to accompany her on trips around the city, so that she could savour everything the guide-books said Istanbul had to offer.       

One evening we went up to the balcony for a late afternoon cocktail before dinner.  Tall plane trees, their limbs lopped off at the lower rungs so they reach towards the sky, match the hotel storey for storey and then advance on it at the 6th floor and beyond.  The balcony, poised above the roofs, gives a view, partially obscured by a dilapidated building in the front, of the Aya Sofya on the left and the Blue Mosque on the right, with the sea in the background, busy always with ships.  

Behind the ships lie the flat-lands of the Asian side, clad in mystery of a morning, which disguise is badly needed as the sun lifts the vapour veils away.  The vapours appear to consist not so much of mist as smoke rising continuously to the sky, so it can take till late in the morning before the other side is fully apparent to the eye.  It’s ugly and box-like as any modern city but rendered more so in stark comparison to the enchantment of the other side. 

It’s spring, and the pollen is in the air, floating like large dust motes all around.  White candles of flowerets flicker between the flat, green leaves and here and there a purple flowering tree sets off the grey roof of the Aya Sofya and its peach-pink walls. The blue mosque exhibits layer upon layer of ice-cream cone shapes stepping in stages towards the sky; a splendid and an alluring aspect of the sky-line, the eye is continually drawn to it and its many spires.

We look down on roofs cluttered with boxes, pallets, crates, bits of plastic, everything lean-to and ramshackle.  A seagull stood vigilant on a nearby chimney pot, while the two youngsters clattered and crept around the four-square, angular, terracotta tiled roof top.  We saw no indication of a nest, though the down still covered their bodies.  At times another seagull would join her; Fem of course took to throwing it tit-bits to take home to feed the chicks.  But we never saw the one seagull ever leave the roof, though we figured they must have taken turns.  It's hard to tell the male and female seagulls apart we decided. 

Fem derived great cynical amusement from the nearby plaster work undertaken to keep the neighbouring terracotta tiles both on the roof and the roof from leaking; he remarked that plaster-work was clearly not a Turkish forte.  In fact, the amount of ramshackle and dilapidated houses all around us in the Historic City was fascinating to behold; the fact that also bemused Fem was that so many of the houses with really good views and that were close to the Bosphorus looked like they needed restoration, if not plain demolition work undertaken upon them. 

It’s 8 pm and the sun is showing no inclination to go down; sea gulls are wheeling to and fro, smoke rising wispily into the sky.  Fem is drinking locally produced Efes Pilsner, much cheaper in Turkey than Coke or fruit juice.  To our right are a French couple with their notes and books and pages pulled out of magazines, unashamedly tourist.  And then we have the South Africans, he reading a Science Fiction book and she, largely pregnant, scribbling away in a big, red, spiral-bound notebook, maybe taking notes of the surrounds? 

When we arrived on our balcony rooftop we found a professional professorial type already seated, his grey hair neatly cut but some of it tied back in a wee pony-tail, who had spread his office about him on the table-top, his work festooned with multi-coloured Post-Its, whilst he busily wrote and amended notes on graph paper, a reading book entitled “Old Floating Cloud” placed strategically at his one elbow.  He was very busily being oblivious to everything around him.  For all we knew he was writing a guide-book to Istanbul. 

The boards and tables set up, his clients refreshed with drinks and snacks, our waitron and breakfast maker Alp retreats to play backgammon endlessly, with friends, in deadly earnestness, in the enclosed balcony space adjoining the open terrace.  As we go to bed at night, our window is open to the street and we hear the steady click clack of the games being played below, slow Turkish music playing in the background, no matter how late it is at night. 

Fem and I discovered how wholly inured to Middle Eastern customs we had become upon arrival in Istanbul, since we have grown accustomed to waiting until after final prayers before thinking of looking for dinner on the evenings we go out.  But final prayer is about an hour after sunset prayers and the sun sets very late on these long summer evenings west of where we were and hence we find ourselves invariably dining late on meze style platters.  Our biggest problem is walking the gauntlet of restaurant owners desirous of pressing their wares on you - “Just look at the menu” they urge, and if you should look at it, they steadfastly and without pause, provokingly press upon you all the rest of the charms of the establishment.  It gets very tiring after a while, to the extent that you start avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes, but then they block your pathway with their bodies instead, firmly persistent. 

Birds are starting to fly a last reconnoitre mission in search of food before night falls.  We look to a view that Disney World could never compete with, the picture-perfect Blue Mosque against a pale sky, with wisp-like clouds of white, tinged with pink and showing an under-belly of grey drifting against it, the gulls wheeling past, making their strange cawing sounds.  A raven arrives.  Fem throws it a pretzel.  It decides he’s untrustworthy and clumsily, awkwardly, noisily, moving first this foot - then that - in an apparent paralysis of indecision as to whether it is left- or right-footed, flies off in a singularly embarrassed fashion.  Against the spires of the blue mosque are highlighted now pigeons, then some type of swift arrives  as the light dims, with to our left and below, the erect seagull still just visible, standing vigilant and sentinel over the chicks on the roof-top below.  

Suddenly there is a racket, and gulls cry indignantly and lift off into the sky in all directions as the muezzin call fills the sky at sunset.  Our professional professor now sighs as he finishes his work and lifts up his drink, raising it to us in a salute or toast with a smile, but the sun has set by now and he’s missed the entire show.