Istanbul's Extravaganzas and Delights

Istanbul is such, that each age, with its own pre-eminent art form, parades before you, displaying now the mosaic and fresco work of the Roman era in the Aya Sofya, now the filigree stone-work and stained glass and architectural elegance of the Blue Mosque, and here the military echoes of numerous mercenary armies can be heard faintly above the crowds at the Topkapi Palace. 

Particularly within the Historic City, where we spent our first three days, we waltzed dizzingly through the various mad multiple layers of it all, with the Aya Sofya 100 metres from our hotel this way, the Blue Mosque 200 metres that way and at least one of us getting overwhelmed by it all somewhere in the middle - usually me, with very sore feet!    

The 1500 year old Aya Sofya or inaptly named “Church of Wisdom” says much about humanity’s pretensions, given that the space-defying dome has come crashing down on architectural and churchly ambitions on more than one earthquake occasion.  It was Constantine’s church, and is still filled with filigree stone-work and what remains of the marble cladding - used in this church lovingly, as a carpenter might treat wood.  The marble is treated almost as a living entity, and with great reverence and deep love has been cut and displayed much as you’d use the innards of a tree - to show off the wonderful lines of the marble and the different types and colours thereof.  The warmth of the marble sets off and contrasts wonderfully with the gold-leaf mosaic, those few bits that are all still all aglitter upon the ceiling. 

Despite the addition of a mihrab (niche pointing to Mecca containing a fragment of the black rock) and a stair for the imam to preach from, there is little that was done to the Aya Sofya upon the fall of Constantinople to then ‘infidel’ nation (as the others, of course, would have it). In fact, it retains its early Christian character almost entirely wholesale, down to the wonderful Catholic iconography of the mosaic pictures of Jesus and others, and marvellously includes one queen with a man whose mosaic face had to be altered each time she renewed her husband, which happened three times in total.  The Aya Sofya stands as a remarkably civilized religious response to this originally Christian church, and offered to us a very marked  comparison to some kinds of contemporary Islamic aggression towards anything remotely Christian.  

However Islamic Istanbul is, it is nothing like many other Arab countries at all. Our Muslim Arab friends tell us that you can basically divide the Muslim world into three categories.  In a very liberal category all on their own, you find the Turks - who no longer even speak Arabic and live in a highly secularised country that has distinctly looked to the  West and not the East (though that too is currently in flux) - much of which is due to the decrees and influence of the much-revered founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk.  In the middle, you get the vast bulk of Arab Muslims, like the Jordanians, who have a constitution and a legal system which, though Shariah in orientation, represents a formalised and rule-bound form of justice, and allows precedent to be set, for instance.  Although religious, the people of these countries can work through prayer times and religious observance is seen as an individual choice, in the same way that morality is not prescribed.  Finally, at the furthest extreme you find, all on their own, Saudi Arabia, which has its own set of Wahhabi principles to which it adheres.

But within Turkey certainly, everything - from the marvellous art work to the very amazing cuisine which though definitely Arab, is at least as much Mediterranean - conspires together to enable me to understand why so many thinkers of generations past were so very enamoured of, and so particularly looked towards, this particular form of East.  My friend Bridget, who has been to Turkey, asked me if I found it similar to our part of the Middle East, and I said that in this instance geographic proximity definitely does not equate to similarities, particularly since an external personality can just be so subsumed by everything being draped in black, while Turkey's external persona is so passionate, colourful, gregarious, creative and vibrant. Of course, once beneath the black, it is a different story, but it is often hard to circumvent that, particularly in mixed company. 

With many things in the historic city, I was continuously reminded of the children’s stories I had read about the mercenary armies who looked after Istanbul and, before that, Constantinople and before that, Byzantium, and wished I hadn’t skimmed over all the war bits which I then found so very boring. But the amalgamation of races and nations certainly has added a lot of energy and vitality into the Turkish character. I always remember when I first told dad that I was seeing an Afrikaner, he sat up in bed and said, “Very good, always a good thing - good for hybrid vigour.”  (He should have known, being of Norwegian descent himself, marrying my mum who is a real mixture of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and even Dutch). And certainly, the Turks are full of hybrid vigour. Certainly, the argument for such hybrid vigour is particularly poignant given the high rate of congenital birth defects that arise as  a direct result of intermarrying only within tribes and then only within specific families that is evident in Saudi Arabia in particular.  

Spending our time in Istanbul as we did, though, I thought how lucky Fem and I are that we are so inherently compatible in terms of our interests and what we like to do with our time, though bringing very different approaches and backgrounds to our appreciation of things.  I love the ancient structures for their art works, while Fem is drawn to them from a more structural perspective, his years of construction work and inherent practicality when it comes to the design of material things coming to the fore.  He strode through the 1500 year old Aya Sofya with his great big feet clad in outsize Caterpillar boots reverberating on the ground, tapping on the walls, testing the tensile strength of the lintels, working out which buttresses were added, when, and how old the wall is in comparison to the new gate, enjoying investigating the alternate tilts and slants of the massive marble tiles, while I, ever looking upwards, tended to stumble a bit on the uneven flagstones - so it’s just as well he learnt early on to give me his arm to clutch onto.     

The entire inner structure of Yeni Cami or New Mosque (only 500 years old) is clad in tiles, with the Islamic whirls and swirls of cobalt blue, aquamarine, red iron oxide and dark greens, interlacing and interconnecting in a complex, dynamic whole.  Huge, interlapping designs twist sinuous as sea-snakes over the interwoven surface brought into symmetry through the use of a central motif with sub-themes wrapped around it.  The rhythms of the art-work are as cosy as those of the ocean on a hot summer’s day, ebbing to and fro, with lines like seaweed wrapping over it all, with here and there a floral design, or even a yellow shoot providing a contrast to it all.  Here you find the deep green of the sea snake’s underbelly as it surfaces, now lighter, a pale green shot through with white as the boat stops, whilst there is interwoven a poppy red sinuously twining itself in and out of the design.  All is contrast and all contributes to a wonderful whole.  I decide it is no coincidence that the ceramic art of Istanbul should so echo the sea, what with the Marmara, the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Mediterranean all around and about.  Without a doubt, though, the Turkish contribution to tile-making and glazing is certainly singular and divinely inspiring.  

The blue mosque, although a veritable feast for the eyes without, is fairly boring within; stained glass the major art work and not very much of that either.  Architecturally, however, it is absolutely magnificent, and I cried at seeing it, looming out of the window of the car right at me on our way from the airport to the Historic City.  And every evening we took great delight in examining its spires from the balcony of the hotel in which we stayed.  

We loved our trip on the Bosphorus, despite my head-cold being greatly exacerbated by the sun, the wind, and the pollen floating on the air such that I ended up with severe hay-fever so sneezed intermittently the whole day. However, what did astonish me, both then, and also when we encountered the houses all buttressed up against the thick outermost walls of the Topkapi Palace was how much it resembled little Amsterdam by the river-sea meets Tuscany’s ochre colours and ceramic tiled red roofs, four-square to the world. The colours they use to paint their buildings are a refreshing form of neutral natural - the orange brick of the terracotta tiles, the walls are russet red, ochre yellow, sage green, sand beige. However, in the ‘newer’ areas that we drove through many blocks of flats are left unpainted, so you don’t have to pay house taxes for up to five years, “This is Turkish tricks” so our guide of the day says.  

Some other Turkish tricks have to do with the prices they set for everyone in Istanbul. A naturally gregarious and friendly nation, their sales skills are ‘in-your-face’ cold-sell translated into some kind of camaraderie by the warmth with which they greet you and the good humour with which they accept a rejection. Which has to be often, since their prices are so staggeringly extravagant and wholly exorbitant, in line with this flamboyant, passionate and colourful country.  Fem mused that since there is no fixed price, that they simply cannot have scruples with regard to seriously over-charging for goods, desperately though they try to justify the price in an age-old tourist game. In fact, in Istanbul anyway, the only way to describe their haggling is, “Sheer, brazen effrontery”.  For example, for a lamp that costs 10 dollars, if you purchase directly from the wholesaler (we know, we saw the prices in a catalogue), we were quoted prices from 45 dollars, to 26 dollars and 15 - all within walking distance of our hotel.  However, the extent to which the Istanbullers will attempt to convince you of the quality of the object, despite all evidence to the contrary, and the disgust with which these emotionally expressive sales people will deal with anything approximating a fact, is fascinating to behold. When I dared to mention the glass lamp (which we did buy in the end) was actually made in India - in Bohemia to be precise, the conversation suddenly veered to talk on the quality of glass and this one is superb quality and so on.  It was comical in the extreme, an entire pantomime put on for our benefit, since there was no gainsaying the fact that all these lamps are made in India to Turkish design specifications and imported wholesale into the country.  However, the retail price was a relatively reasonable mark-up on the wholesale price and so we bought it.  But bargaining, Turkish style, can be extremely tiring, since they become so excited over the whole business, which tends to leave the more pale northern types cold, particularly when pressed for time as you invariably are on a holiday tour.    

The Summer Palace is all French rococo, with paint-work everywhere, and stunning blue faux marble that is even cold to the touch.  Built in one go, on loans from the French and German governments, which were only paid back well into the 20th century, the Palace displays an alarming homogeneity. Everything one era, one style - a veritable show-piece but the light from all the glass work chandeliers and splintering off  is like the show-room it resembles, ultimately alienating and cold. I tried to envisage it with children crawling around on the floor and spats between the harem wives but couldn’t quite manage the trick. The easy domesticity of everyday life has completely evaded this Palace, built so the harem women could bathe in the Bosphorus, without first taking into account the current and depth of the river at the shore, so they had to install a pool at the back instead. For those of us grown accustomed to the quaint but at times bizarre customs of the Middle East we were unastonished to discover that all food had to be brought by boat from the other palace where the men slaved away in the kitchens - the only surprise was that men were the ones doing the slaving.  

I was overwhelmed in particular by the woman’s reception room, with huge cabbage roses blossoming in paint upon the ceiling, great big orange flowers with white centres, and the big, full-blown “English” roses that were typical of that entire art era predominating.  However, what deeply impressed me was that not one flower design was repeated, the entire ceiling.  I know, because I checked very hard, and then pointed it out to Fem, deeply enthralled by my discovery of the peculiarity of this ceiling and the amount of work that entailed.  Fem was not at all bemused, “That’s because the ladies spent most of their time looking at it,” he said without a moment’s hesitation and much to the amusement of our Dutch companions.  

At the end of our tour on the Bosphorus and to the Summer Palace we stopped at a private industry at the site of the old women’s prison, where a jewellery business has been set up.  After a tour of the premises, we are shuffled downstairs where a persuasive young man manages to urge upon us the purchase of harem earrings for me with little emeralds and white sapphires in them. We buy them, finally, as the lights are flickering on and off in the shop, telling everyone it is time to go home, at which stage 25% is miraculously lopped off the price so I finally relent and let Fem buy me a birthday present since his face says he wants to “too much” as Hadeel would put it and who am I to prevent him from spoiling his wife for her birthday?     

Finally, on the Sunday we undertake to visit the Topkapi Palace. “Please Do Not Enter The Grass” say the signs sprinkling the lawns. “Eugh!” says Fem, reading it. We went there on what was also a National Turkish Holiday, to day to find it aswarm with masses of groups of Turkish children and had a very harried and hurried time of it all, what with my sore feet and all. What stand out for me are the fact that Chinese-like kimono ceremonial robes that the Ottoman princes wore remained unchanged until the 19th century, whereupon they adopted French-style militaristic bombast as the new fashion and introduced pleats into the trousers.  Fem was terribly impressed by a huge ceremonial sword, “That’s larger than me!” so we had to go back to see it and so he could pose in front of it since I had exited the armaments hall, pleading a blister, a red nose and a continual sneezing fit which had me suffering throughout the entirety of the Topkapi Palace, though some wonderful ceramic work in the library-cum-gazebo more than recompensed for it all.  

And that was Istanbul, pretty much in a (large) nutshell!