Incredible Istanbul

Getting to Istanbul

Our latest adventure took us to the truly ancient city of Istanbul, formerly called Constantinople, and in all likelihood probably something else before that depending on who you were and when you lived. Without doubt, the ancient ancestry of the city alone would be justification enough to visit, and as some of you know, I am a pretty fair student of history and geography, so you may be curious as to how we came to chose Istanbul as the destination. I would like to say that the decision was based on the rich history of the city as the bastion of Western civilization as we know it following the sacking of Rome, as the city that retained the learning, the art, and even the Christian religion after Rome disintegrated, the same city that would become the seat of the great Ottoman Empire that controlled all of the Middle East, an area encompassing present day Iraq, the entire Arabian peninsula, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, all of North Africa, and much of the Black Sea coastal areas along with all of southeastern Europe including what is today Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, and the parts of what are now Hungary and Austria to the very gates of Vienna. This was an empire that would last until the end of World War I. I truly wish I could tell you those were my reasons. But, the real reason is that every time I board a Delta plane, a frequent enough occurrence, the first thing I do is check the route maps, which admittedly don’t change that often but I check them every time, even on a day trip, and I sort of pick a city Delta flies to and decide that I want to go there. And that is the most honest reason I can give for why Istanbul appeared on the itinerary plan.
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Delta’s flights to Istanbul are not daily and they leave from JFK, not Atlanta, so to avoid a tight connection time, we arrived in JFK a day early with the plan to spend one night in NYC. We also wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to fly on the helicopter between JFK and the 34th Street Heliport again, which we did. The problem with that, unlike our first experience of the helicopter service, was that our flight out of Atlanta was delayed by maintenance problems. As the pilot sagely pointed out however, it was much preferable to be on the ground wanting to be in the sky than to be in the sky wanting really badly to be on the ground. You don’t really have to think too long about that statement to realize that the man is quite correct. But as we arrived later than anticipated and because the helicopter company’s computers were down, they didn’t anticipate our arrival to intercept our bags planeside as they did before. This meant that the bags had to travel through JFK’s labyrinth of conveyors to get to the helicopter and there was another passenger waiting for our same flight. They managed to get my bag but not Tim’s. They promised to deliver the bag by midnight, but honestly, when you are leaving the country for a week the following day, you sort of don’t want to count on that process. So we decided to wait until the next helicopter flight, which should have been hourly, but with one machine out of service for maintenance, the wait was closer to 3 hours. So, we took naps and noshed in the Crown Room until Tim’s bag was found and our helicopter flight took off. It was still a novel and rather awe-inspiring experience to lift off and fly directly over JFK, Queens, and Brooklyn while landing practically on the East River, but somehow with the delays and the issues, the allure was tarnished and for the $300+ you pay for the 8 minute joy ride, we decided that in the future we would just hire a car service to/from JFK. They are cleaner than cabs and amazingly enough, cheaper too. We would have cause the following day to discover this first hand.

We had booked into the Washington Square Hotel practically on the New York University campus for the sake of location and some degree of nostalgia on my part since I went to NYU. There are alarmingly few places to stay in Manhattan outside of the midtown shopping/theatre zone, which wasn’t really near anywhere we wanted to go, so the WSH worked out well. It is a vintage boutique hotel, often booked out well in advance, so if you want to stay there, plan several months ahead. The building is from the 1930’s easily, but very much refurbished inside, although as is true of most NYC hotel rooms, you don’t have much room. One almost irony of the hotel was that NYC is of course not a warm and toasty place in January, and as is so frequently the case in NYC buildings, the heat is steam and central, meaning you really don’t control the temperature of your room at all. Tim and I don’t care for an overheated room, so although it started to snow, we kept the windows open in a mostly futile attempt to cool off the room.
The thing I most like to do in NYC is eat. I know, big surprise, but hey, there it is. And my choice was Katz’s deli on East Houston (How-ston, NOT Hew-ston) Street. The place started in the late 19th century and is rather famous in many respects, but most notoriously because the scene in When Harry Met Sally where Sally very clearly demonstrates how effectively a woman can fake an orgasm was filmed there. Aside from this questionable claim to fame, the pastrami and corned beef really are excellent. However, it was a Monday night and when we walked in all the counter guys were in a huddle chatting about something and seemed in no hurry to take our orders. Tim, yes Tim, not me, asked them if any of them were actually interested in working. Now, normally this is the sort of thing I say, but in this case, it was Mr. Timothy who said it. When one of them finally did ask what we wanted, Tim responded with “Oh, so you ARE actually working today!” The kid, probably wisely, said nothing else. The food was still good but the prices have reached insane heights for even NYC and in the future it will be a hard sell for me to return there.

Aside from the lack of usual service in Katz’s, my dismay and shock was centered on the rapid gentrification of the lower east side of Manhattan, the former home of immigrant tenements and even when I went to school there in the late 80’s not the sort of place one would hang out about after dark. But now there is a gleaming new Whole Foods taking up the better part of an entire block that wasn’t even there when we were last in NYC in August of 2008. As I said then and as I say again, I understand change happens, but somehow there is this part of me that wants NYC to still be a bit gritty, dirty, and yes, even dangerous on occasion. I don’t want Manhattan, especially not the former sleazy parts, to become the same stores and people I can see in Buckhead Atlanta! It saddens me, but it is the wave it seems. But I will continue to miss using tokens in the subway and cannot understand how a one ride paper ticket is more cost effective or easier than a clearly reusable piece of pretty brass and tin. Another mark of another era gone forever.

No doubt my sleep cycle was already off because I don’t sleep well before a trip, what with jitters of anticipation as opposed to nerves. So, at 3am I was wide awake. I gently, in my opinion although he may have a different view, awakened Tim since there is absolutely no fun in being awake in NYC at 3am alone and we went foraging. Luckily one thing that has not changed in NYC is the ready availability of any food stuff you can imagine, and probably much you can’t, at any hour. So I was able to have a salt bagel at Bagel Buffet on 6th Avenue (think soft pretzel shaped like a bagel with extra salt) with lots of gooey cream cheese and then we walked about the neighborhood, familiar to us both for different reasons, marveling how the former Joe’s Pizza was now a yuppie juice bar and saddened that the Italian bakeries on Bleeker Street, while still in existence, were closed that early in the morning. So instead we took advantage of another NYC tradition, the 24 hour Korean grocery stores. They have an eclectic selection of things and we found plenty to satisfy our need to munch on and probably by 5am were sleeping again for a few hours more.

We were scheduled to fly back to JFK by helicopter the following afternoon, but we had been warned by the helicopter company staff that with the anticipated snow storms our flight might be grounded because, unknown to us previously, helicopters do not fly in snow or rain because the rotors are particularly susceptible to freezing precipitation of any type and because helicopters fly by visual flight rule only, meaning unlike passenger jets, they cannot land by instrumentation alone in fog or other visibility reducing weather. And sure enough, our return flight to JFK was cancelled. Not a major problem in that we used a car service that had us to JFK in plenty of time, after another salt bagel of course.

By the time we were due to depart for Istanbul, the snow had significantly picked up its pace and it was clear that we would have to wait in line for de-icing, a process new to me, but one Tim had gone through before. At northern airports, Minneapolis is a good example, they have regular and permanent de-icing stations, but at JFK, where snow and ice are actually not as predictable a feature as you might think, planes line up and a de-icing vehicle with a very tall boom drives up to you and rinses your entire aircraft in a special fluid that has a low freezing point and which melts the ice but doesn’t re-freeze. You can hear the jet of fluid hitting the plane and you can see it run down the windows and while novel it wasn’t particularly exciting.

Our flight attendant asked us if we had been to Istanbul before and when we told her we had not, she was very enthusiastic in her review of the wonders of the city and how she flew the route routinely so that she could revisit. She assured us that “Americans had no idea how wonderful Istanbul was,” and having been there, I am inclined to believe that she is correct about that.

As most of you realize, Tim and I spend a fair amount of time on Delta planes and simply adore the in-flight safety video. We are fairly certain that the flight attendant in the video is a) not a real flight attendant and that b) her cheekbones have been, shall we say, enhanced. But the real fun in it is that we know it so well that we mime her movements in everything from snapping shut the cell phone to the big smile while grasping the seat cushion for flotation. OK, that part is done by a guy, but you get the idea. By the way, when Miss Cheekbones tells us that our life vests in the Business Class cabin are located in one of three different places, we now actively look to determine where ours are after the landing of the US Airways plane in the Hudson! But, the very best part is the no smoking part where they show a flight attendant telling someone “You can’t smoke, I’m so sorry.” And then Miss Cheekbones comes back on the screen to say “Smoking is not allowed on any Delta flight and tampering with, disabling, etc etc etc.” But the thing is that when she says the very first part she is wagging her finger right at you, so since for some reason this is our favorite part, Tim and I always have our fingers in the air to wag no-no to smokers at the exact moment she does. Well, the flight attendant standing at the galley section watching us watch the video clearly saw this and lost her composure to the point of bending over laughing. She came back to tell us that the video had won industry awards but only because “men judge these things,” presumably referring to the attractiveness of Miss Cheekbones. She doesn’t do a whole lot for either of us of course, but you’ve got to hand it to her for a certain sarcastic style and flair that makes me sort of want to be her in a mannish sort of way. You know? Je ne sais quoi!

With that we were off and never in my life have I experienced such a turbulent flight. The weather patterns over the North Atlantic were so bad that they almost didn’t even complete meal service, and honestly, I am not sure they should have attempted it. It was very rough, they were bouncing around, wine was sloshing, and when your drink is moving enough to get out of the glass when on your tray table without you touching it, you know that there is some turbulence going on. Even with 160 degrees of recline and five feet of space between my feet and the seat in front of me, and even with my general tendency to sleep the moment I sit on a plane, I had a tough time resting. Of course, it could also be that having experienced LAN Chile’s full flat beds on the flights to and from Easter Island that I was just spoiled and a bit miffed that I had to settle for less with the airline of my choosing based in my own country. But make no mistake, whatever the United States does well, and I am sure there are lots of those things, air travel and airports are just not it compared to most other national fleets and airports I have experienced. However, the 160 MPH tail winds causing the turbulence, which pushed our air speed to within single digits of 700 MPH, we actually landed in Istanbul on time despite a two hour delay in departure.

Istanbul In Person

I don’t know what I expected of Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, but what I found was one of the easiest experiences of my life. You buy your sticker visa, they waive you through, and the customs guys look at you but ask for nothing. When the big sliding doors open though, it is another world in several incongruous ways. When you land at Istanbul, so have flights from all over the Middle East, Iran, and Central Asia, meaning you will see women in full chador covering, which could be a shock if you have forgotten where you are, and indeed you might because that woman in full chador covering might well be shopping at the Fendi store, or maybe at Dolce and Gabana, or Hermes, or just about any other internationally famous design outlet you can think of. Contrast this to Delta’s terminal at LAX where your choice is ticky-tacky LA/Hollywood souvenirs or See’s candy. Landing in Istanbul is like parking on Rodeo Drive! Some of you serious shoppers with industrial strength credit cards might never leave the arrivals hall.

Our hotel, the Sirkeci Konak (http://www.sirkecikonak.com/) had sent a driver to pick us up as a courtesy and he was waiting for us. He was a very nice young man who pointed out items of interest as we drove the relatively short distance to the hotel. The hotel shares a street with the walls defining what is now Gulhane Park, but which prior to the founding of the Turkish Republic out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s by Kamal Ataturk, these walls defined the Sultan’s private spaces as part of the Topkapi Palace complex. Nowadays, the neighborhood is given over almost entirely to auto parts stores! The hotel is constructed in the classic Ottoman style with wooden exteriors, and with only 52 rooms is cozy and personal. When we arrived to check in, we were given seats and offered tea or coffee to enjoy during the process of copying our passports etc. What was this? No counter to stand at while a relatively surly, and probably poorly paid, front desk clerk checks you in? Nope, not in Istanbul. Everywhere you go, polite engagement and endless cups of free and freshly made coffee or tea cheerfully hand delivered are the norm. This appears to be someone’s job in every store or establishment. I have to imagine that a Turk visiting the United States would be horrified by our apparent rudeness, but as an American visiting Turkey, I was loving the apple tea! The hotel provided free breakfast daily and gave one night free because volumes were down and they had introduced a special that wasn’t in effect when we booked, but they advanced it to us anyway.

The hotel also had the advantage of being only ½ block from the tramline and within easy walking distance of literally all the major sites of the old city of Istanbul. If you visit the website homepage for the hotel, the room they show was ours or you can see our own pictures of it. Either way, as you will see, it was quite the room with wood floors with Turkish carpets, a balcony, spacious, lavender sachets on the bed, a pillow menu with 4 different styles to choose from, and a brass covered dish in the center of the bed that opened to reveal Turkish delight as a sweet snack. Heaven!

In the bathroom, you could choose the tub/shower, or the regular stand up shower. I mean why settle for only one choice? And I have to say something about a Turkish toilet, only because I had never seen one before. In almost all respects it looks like any other toilet, and like most European toilets it has a button on the wall you push to flush, the smaller button for small flush, the larger button for large flush. But right on the rim at the back of the bowl was a brass nozzle. Hmmm, what might that be for puzzles the clueless American, meaning me? Well, let’s just say that if you are sitting on the bowl and you turn the tap on your right side, you will quickly and coldly find out what it does and what it is for. Not to worry, it warms up quickly and I am all for saving a tree or two in the process, so I don’t think our toilet paper dispenser was ever emptied during our stay. Now remember that this is European Turkey, not Asian Turkey and I am not done with toilets just yet.

The room also had a balcony with two chairs and a table. Standing there you had perfect views over Gulhane Park, out to the Bosporus Straights, the Sea of Marmara, and up towards Topkapi Palace, Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia), the Blue Mosque, and the grey herons flying to and fro from the marshy sea edges back to their nests high in the trees of Gulhane Park. They are hard to miss since they stand 40 inches, or over 3 feet, tall and have wingspans of 76 inches, over 6 feet. We also had a resident neighborhood tomcat on the roof next door who was often vocally defending his territory. One could also look down on the railroad tracks where the Orient Express itself still runs at it reaches its terminus in Istanbul feet from our hotel.

This cat was only one of literally thousands we would see everywhere in Istanbul and beyond. They wander at will, even in and out of mosques and Ayasofya itself. As a rule they are not interested in you or your doings and the Turks seem to ignore them as well. Unlike Romania, there were rarely dogs in sight, and those we did see were pathetic creatures, which are apparently reviled and feared by the locals who shoo them away. Apparently it is much better to be a cat in Istanbul than to be a dog, but ailurophobes beware, this is no city for you!

I don’t know where the cats keep their litter boxes because the city is spotlessly clean. There is not a bit of trash or litter anywhere on the roads or sidewalks, so unlike the drive to Atlanta airport, and even the street vendors selling hot roasted chestnuts or corn on the cob appear neat and tidy. The most popular street snack though is what appears to be a thin bagel type of bread covered in sesame seeds, properly known as simit. We had them occasionally during afternoon tea at the hotel on the way in or out. They are tasty and addictive if you like sesame, but if you don’t, you won’t.

As we started to wander the streets, everyone who talked to us, and I assure you literally every shopkeeper will, assumed we were brothers. I have had some people say we do bear a resemblance to one another and it seemed easiest to let people continue to assume that we were related. However, it struck me as odd they we were constantly assumed to be either German or Russian. I get that we are not skinny enough to be French and we couldn’t be British because we smiled and had decent teeth. Finally we asked why we were assumed to be German or Russian and the answer, while typically direct and honest as Turks are even when you ask them if a particular jacket makes you look fat (it did), was that Americans don’t come to Istanbul in the winter months, only other Europeans. No, we were told, Americans only come to Turkey now when they are on a cruise ship that they can run back to and feel safe since we have all been taught by George Bush and company that all Muslim people are evil and want to kill us. Once it was known that we were in fact American we were viewed as somewhat of a novelty, a hugely and warmly welcomed novelty, and the Turks were very clear that while they were surprised that America had the sense to elect Obama, they were thrilled that we had. Apparently they had watched the elections closely as well hoping for the same outcome we were. But never mind, welcome to Turkey, we hope you enjoy it. May I offer you tea? No, no problem, just for a moment, I make you my friend. I have a brother/cousin/other relation in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, somewhere, perhaps you know him? One particularly charming Kurdish carpet seller even had a map for collecting the 50 US State Quarters and would ask if you had any that he needed to fill his map. Of course this is a ruse to get you into his store, but it is an effective one, and two carpets later, plus the two pillow covers he gave me as gift with purchase, he also gained two state quarters he didn’t already have. He actually had Hawaii, the last one issued and only one I don’t have!

Turkish carpets and carpet sellers. Whatever you have likely heard of them is true indeed. They are everywhere and they are persistent and clever. But we expected this and maintained a good sense of humor with them, which in turn causes them to maintain a good sense of humor with you. If you look at their products they will seat you, display many rugs to you, determine your tastes, advise you, tell you tales, some true some probably not, and of course a young man will keep your tea or coffee cup full. If you choose to not buy, there are no hard feelings, perhaps you will change your mind later, who can say? We had intended to buy one replacement carpet for the living room, the other two of the three we now actually have were not intended but they are so lovely that we couldn’t resist. Of course you bargain in the prices you pay and no matter how good you are at it you will still likely lose, but the process if sort of fun. My standard response was “You honor me with your assumption of my wealth to quote me such a price, but truly I am not a wealthy man!” This response earned me at least one hug! Turks are a physically demonstrative people and it is very common to see women walking with arms linked and even men walk this way or hold hands or kiss on greeting. It isn’t at all sexual, it is just their way, and after an hour or so of carpet negotiation, you too will be, even for a moment, an honorary Turk to be hugged or kissed.

The funniest banter I heard while carpet bargaining was for the first piece we bought at least in part because the seller told us that the green was achieved using dyes extracted from pistachio nuts, which we adore, so he sort of had us. Now, you can’t export a rug over 100 years old from Turkey but most rugs sold are used and so the story goes that girls in their youth weave their dowry rugs over the course of years, putting many symbols into it of the life they hope for and expect. As time passes and need for cash arises, these rugs may be sold to dealers who sell them to others. Rugs of this type are never large because a Turkish girl wouldn’t expect to have a room large enough to use such a huge piece in. The rough equivalent of 5′ x7′ will be the most common size you see. But at any rate, we were pretty taken with this one rug but we were not taken with the initial price of over $1,500. Tim did the bargaining and when his offer of $500 was too low we eventually reached a face saving deal of $500.99! The shop owner told us “you know we are Muslims and in Islam we practice circumcision. And we have a saying when you bargain hard and come close to cutting into my profit that you are circumcising me and taking some of the head of my penis with the skin! So, you are hurting me here, but I like your bargaining style, so yes, I will sell to you.” Once the price is agreed to, especially after you have removed part of the head of a man’s penis, it is very bad form to back out. And I have to say that I have NEVER seen people appear so quickly to fold and wrap a carpet in brown paper and put in into a purpose made duffel bag as they do in Istanbul. And because we were now family because we were customers, we were even invited for lunch the following day. When we bought our second and third carpets from the charming gentleman with the map of state quarters, he even hugged me and told me that I had a more generous heart than Timothy because I would have not been as keen to remove as much of the head of his penis!

Before I describe any more of our adventures, it occurs to me that perhaps I should explain the geographic setting of the city of Istanbul. Of course you could use Google Earth or an atlas as well to help this make more sense if you wish, but Istanbul is really three cities at least. On the European side and to the southwest of the Golden Horn, an inlet from the Sea of Marmara, is the old city where the majority of the tourist sites are and where stayed. Across the Golden Horn, but still in Europe, is new Istanbul, the home of the Marriott and the Hilton, and the expensive designer shops along the pedestrian mall main street. Honestly, it looks much like most any other European city and it didn’t do much of anything for me. The third Istanbul is the city on the Asian side of the Bosporus Straights, which connect the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, while the Sea of Marmara connects through the Dardanelles Straights to the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas. Asian Istanbul is where the majority of people live, it is cheaper, and it is more traditional and conservative. This is not the place to go to party or drink, or even shop unless what you are after is vegetables or other local produce. To put it into perspective, some 2 million people a day minimum use the ferries alone, not counting the bridges, to cross from the Asian side to the European sides for work. And the three cities are each unmistakably distinct in their own way and what appealed to us might not appeal to another, so if you go, you owe it to yourself to at least sample each of the three sides of the triangle.

I would imagine that without argument Ayasofya Mosque, formerly known as the Hagia Sophia Church, is the most recognized, at least by name, monument in Istanbul’s entire old city. Conveniently enough, we could walk to it in all of 5 minutes. However, we could not figure out how to get in! A young man who wanted to “practice his English” engaged us in conversation but it soon became clear that what he wanted to do was to direct us to the underground cistern, which we would do, but for the ultimate purpose of taking us to his family’s carpet shop, which we would also ultimately do, and thus not end our first day in Istanbul without a carpet. But for the moment, we were intent on the Ayasofya and while there was a line that seemed to be for admission we couldn’t decipher what the sign actually said and the other place that appeared to have a ticket booth also had two young men with semi-automatic rifles, so we were not sure that we should be headed that way either. By the way, you soon get used to the presence of soldiers who are heavily armed in Istanbul, especially around tourist sites and government buildings. Some consulates were bombed there not many years ago so there is a noticeable level of security, but not truly intrusive in any way.

So, there we were two jet-lagged and while not lost, clearly confused tourists trying to figure out how to get into the Ayasofya, which honestly from outside isn’t all that much to look at. Soon we were approached by another young man, who at first glance you would think would be yet another carpet seller, but in fact he was a government licensed tourist guide fluent in English and Russian, which I found an odd combination. He did indeed show us his license and explained that he was a high school history teacher but that Istanbul schools were on winter break, which explained the mobs of school age children everywhere, and that this was how he made extra income during breaks and summer vacations. He also explained that while Turkey has very high educational standards, there is also a great deal of unemployment, so many folks work secondary or informal jobs, such as he did, to help make ends meet. His name was Baris Nas. His first name is pronounced Barish because the final s in the first name has a cedilla that I cannot reproduce on this keyboard. While Ataturk eliminated the use of the Arabic script in 1923, thereby rendering the entire population illiterate overnight, and introduced the Roman alphabet to Turkey, one will quickly discover that it is a modified Roman alphabet with some letters that will appear familiar to speakers/readers of French or Spanish, along with others that won’t make a bit of sense to anyone other than a Turk, the most infamous to my mind being the lower case i without the dot. It is a unique vowel sound that I never quite got the hang of, but to confuse with it with the actual I sound could create problems.

At any rate, Baris literally rescued us. He explained that the long line was for Turks who were using their museum passes, which only citizens could buy and which allowed a year of entry to most every historical site for next to nothing. Foreigners, like us, were few in January and we were supposed to use another line that wasn’t so obvious because of the soldiers. Baris however skirted around them, bought us tickets, as a government licensed guide his admission was free, and away we went. I could easily believe that Baris was a teacher because of his depth and wealth of knowledge regarding world history but also because of his habit of asking us questions about what we thought something was for, or could we tell him the story of so and so. This annoyed Tim sometimes who never knew the answers (so much for the glorious superiority of Catholic school education Lindy!) but I often surprised him by not being an ignorant American, despite having to suffer the depredations of a mere public school. In fact, Baris and even one of the carpet sellers would ask me what my profession was such that I should know so much history and myth. I assured them that my profession had nothing to do with it, but that rather my public school teacher, imagine that, a competent public school experience that lasts to this day, Margaret Land was primarily responsible for what I was able to correctly answer. So kudos to Margaret! 20+ years later and your teaching STILL resonates. Although I do really think that a former Catholic school boy ought to have had one up on me in defining what the Tree of Life represented in Turkish carpets is as opposed to me, the confirmed agnostic. But alas, this was not to be the case. I say score infinity for public schools including the ones of the type Baris teaches at in Turkey.

Baris made all the difference in our experience of the Ayasofya, the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, the Basilica Cisterns, and Topkapi Palace both because of the depth of his knowledge about each place and because of his almost uncanny ability to jump queues and get tickets. In terms of the details of each place, I think those of you who are interested are best served by turning to other reference resources for details about how old, or how high a dome is, who built what, why, when, both because I am acutely aware that some of you frankly won’t care, which is fine, and because for me to repeat it all to you, I would just have to look it up anyway! And most all of you, with a few exceptions, are reading this on-line or printed it from on-line, meaning that the wonders of the oracle known as Google will do you well in informing you of the details. Without question Google will do a better job that the Oracle at Delphi whose typically enigmatic instructions led, according to legend, to the settlement of the Asian side of the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara.

I will however, point out a few things that struck me as important in perhaps a broader sense as I visited each place. For example, Hagia Sophia predates Saint Peter’s Church in Rome and was the original home of what is now known as the Catholic faith. The Church would later split into Western and Eastern branches, a schism that remains today, but I think it critical to realize that the original home of Roman Catholicism wasn’t in Rome at all. That came much later and what today is a mosque turned museum is the true home base if you will measure from historical time. The building you see today is the third built on the site and its conversion from church with mosaics and pictorial representations of people to mosque involved the removal or covering of such representations since they are forbidden by Islam. As a museum though, the mosaics are being uncovered and rediscovered, for the Islamic converters of the building just plastered over the mosaics, they didn’t remove them. The processes of changing a building from a Catholic, to an Orthodox or Eastern Catholic Church, to a mosque don’t end with the Ayasofya, there are hundreds of such buildings around the city that you could choose to visit, by intent, or as we did in one case, purely by accident of being lost.

As was true of every Turk we met, Baris wanted us to know how happy he was about the election of Obama. But Baris also wanted to put some context into the recent events surrounding the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s harsh words and storming out of the meetings in Davos, Switzerland days before our arrival over a disagreement with Shimon Peres of Israel about events in Gaza. The most empiric reality I can gather regarding the actual event was that Peres talked over Erdogan, rudely, and that Erdogan didn’t respond well to what is a highly emotional issue in the Islamic world, even for a moderate state like Turkey that has entirely normalized relations with Israel and could serve as a moderating influence in the region.

Baris wanted to be sure that we understood, despite what the Fox News effect might have to say to the contrary, that Erdogan was angry at the actions of Peres and Israel as a nation, not at the Jews as a religious group. And it caused me to stop and think about how difficult a distinction this seems to be for many Americans to make, i.e. Israel while being a Jewish State doesn’t represent the entirety of the Jewish people, and not even all Israelis agree with Israel’s current and past military actions. But in the United States it is practically illegal to be even vaguely critical of Israel for reasons that are murky to me at best but which range, in my opinion, from the influences of the ultra-right Christian groups to the Anti-Defamation League and lots of ground in between. But to equate all Jews with the actions of Israel, or vice-versa, would be equivalent to equating all Americans with the actions of George W. Bush and I personally am NOT signing up for that one! My point ultimately is that I think it is a particular challenge at times for us to separate the actions and attitudes of a nation’s leadership from the entirety of the population who happen to live in a certain nation-state. And I also think it is critically important to the future of the world that we learn to do this more effectively. I personally refuse to believe, regardless of what anyone tries to tell me, that all Iranians are bad scary people. I deny this from experience. And I refuse to believe that all North Koreans are evil and bent on destroying me. These jingoistic absurdities will only lead to more hate, more death, and more true evil of kinds that the world has witnessed enough of already.

I also think the issue of Israel becomes difficult because of the origins of the country coming out of World War II and the Holocaust and the great collective guilt that the entire Western world is made to bear for events that few living people today had any part in or any control over. And while I would never deny that the Holocaust was a real event for I have personally witnessed the evidence of that as well, I also think that not forgetting that something happened does not equate to a free ticket to slaughter innocent people in your own turn as Israel has been known to do on more than one occasion.

I am not saying that the Palestinians, Hamas, the other Arab states that refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist, are 100% correct, but I do think that it is overdue time that we listen to the perspectives of people who might not agree with us in order to at least better understand the issues at stake instead of engaging in knee jerk reactions or behaving as though we have some divine right to organize the world to better suit our need to drive SUVs or to salve our own guilt over the actions of World War II. I think it is a valid question to ask why it was that land that had been part of the Islamic world for centuries was taken/given to the Jews because of events that happened in Europe, not the Middle East. If the guilt was German/Austrian/Polish guilt, then why was Israel not created from parts of those nations? Note, I am NOT saying that it should have happened that way, I am simply saying that these are questions that people in the region ask and I think they have a right to be heard and their questions discussed in a civil manner. Without this, I do not believe we will ever resolve anything. And a huge step towards that is to end the automatic equation that a criticism of an Israeli action makes one an anti-Semitic person. For if this is so, then by definition, those Jewish Israelis who are protesting their country’s actions in Gaza much be anti-Semitic Jews, a definition which I seriously doubt they would concur with.

Likewise, in our discussions with Iran, and I assume that we will eventually grow up and act like adults with Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and other sovereign nations we don’t always agree with instead of engaging in embarrassing name calling or unwarranted aggressive military actions, that we will admit to what is already a historically documented reality and apologize for the actions of Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles in organizing the forced removal of the legitimately elected leader of Iran and replacing him with the Shah because of the more favorable oil concessions the Shah provided. The fact that most Americans don’t even know that this was done is embarrassing to me and infuriating to Iranians who certainly haven’t forgotten it. To make matters worse, we then named one of Washington DC’s airports after the architect of regime change as though he did a heroic thing! But then we renamed National Airport to Reagan, so we have a habit of this. Of course Reagan was a hero for suppressing for years the known CDC scientific truth about what would become known as HIV and AIDS allowing more people to become infected and die along with delaying research into basic virology and treatments. Naturally these are the types of people we should name airports after. As usual, I have digressed, but my mind is active in situations and places of historical import and while the links may be tangential, they are still linkages.

As we were headed to the Blue Mosque, built shortly after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks to contrast with what was then still the Hagia Sophia and which is located directly across from it along the Hippodrome, a left over Roman chariot race track and gladiator ring, now mostly a ring road, Baris explained that he came originally from the countryside of Turkey and that his father is the imam of a small local mosque. Baris himself claimed to not be very religious and that the process of education sort of caused him to not be able to believe most of it anymore and that it was further his belief that most Turks were not very devout Muslims either. Baris claimed to have prayed maybe once in his life and he suspected that such was true of most other Turks as well. Of course I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, and as is the case in most situations, I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between the two poles.

Baris was adamant that the Koran does not require that women wear the headscarf and this is probably a particularly sensitive area for Turkish people because of the legal decisions of the high court regarding the right of women to wear head scarves in places of public employment or education. The Koran does require all people, including men, to dress modestly, but the actual definition of what modesty is remains very much a local and cultural feature. Again, it is critical to remember that Islam is a religion, not a culture. Turks are not Arabs, nor are Iranians, nor are Indonesians for that matter. Many or most of these cultural groups may be Muslim but how that is practiced varies widely largely due to differing cultural norms.

Ever since 2001 Islam has been actively and passively painted as evil, taunted as the “false religion” by the extreme Christian right, and held up as the great evil to be overcome as foretold in Revelations. I absolutely have to be on record as saying that I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE ACTIONS OF THE TERRORISTS OF 9/11. However, I do think that I can understand some of their motivations without excusing their actions. And I think it also very fair and accurate to say that every religion on the planet has been perverted for political reasons and reasons of ethnic hatreds. Let us not forget the Inquisition which I assure you tortured and slaughtered far more people than died on 9/11, let us not forget the use of the Bible as an excuse for the continuance of slavery in the American South, and perhaps most importantly of all, let us not forget that terrorism is the last action of a desperate person or people and in my opinion the best way to combat terror is not with more guns and bombs but with open ears and a willingness to try to understand where that level of desperation and anger comes from and to be willing to own up to our part in creating and maintaining it and then to seek to help redress it. The brutal reality is that the US government supports extremely violent and exploitative leaders and regimes around the world, and let us not forget that Saddam Hussein was trained and installed by the US to counter perceived threats from Iran in the region. We removed him once he was no longer useful. But we are the force that maintains autocratic monarchies in the Persian Gulf states to this day and we are the force that allows the dictatorship of Mubarack to remain in Egypt. Our force in the world is not always for good and yet the American public is so frequently ignorant of this or refuses to believe what is well documented and known to the rest of the world for reasons I still cannot fathom.

And finally let us not forget that the second most deadly terrorist attack on US soil was perpetrated by a US citizen and trained US soldier who was most certainly not Muslim by the name of Timothy McVeigh. Remember him? They certainly do in Oklahoma City. And the Unibomber, Theodore John Kaczynski, was also not Muslim. The point is that evil people can be of any faith, any color, and creed, any culture, and our labeling and assumptions as well as our willful forgetfulness of our own transgressions as a nation do nothing to further any greater good.

One of the greatest issues Americans seem to take with Islam is their perceptions of the roles of women in Islamic society and yet this is something that I think very few Americans truly understand for there is no one prescribed role for Islamic women, but rather many differing roles based again largely or almost exclusively on culture rather than religion. The rules for women in Saudi Arabia are not the same rules as those in Turkey or in Iran. In fact, women account for more university students in Iran than do men and are a greater proportion of students than in American schools. Iranian women are more common in positions of authority and government in Iran than in the United States. Americans put such a huge value judgment on the wearing or not wearing of a scarf that covers the hair, or of clothing that does not accentuate the shape of a woman’s body. And even when we ask Islamic women what they think of the dress expectations of their culture, as a NPR reporter did on the radio on our way to the airport as Iran was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the overthrow of the Shah, they frequently ignore what women actually say in favor of what they believe an American audience wants to hear. Many devout Islamic women dress the way they do because they believe it to be an essential part of their faith and to deny them this right would be equivalent to forcing most Americans to walk into public stark naked. We assign American cultural values and norms to other societies and then when they differ we label them as wrong, oppressive, or even evil. And yet, do we not realize that head coverings for women were common in Catholic churches until very recently, and in Spain, Portugal, and Italy amongst the older set still are. Do we not realize that they left and right sections of the nave in cathedrals were used to separate men from women? And how many Catholic female priests have you seen lately? Or how many Mormon women in positions of intellectual or political power? I am not being sarcastic here, I am being very serious! Before we point fingers at Islam shouldn’t we consider that in Pentecostal churches women are forbidden to wear make-up, to cut their hair, or to wear pants? What about Mennonite women who must wear their bonnets, or Amish women dressed conservatively all in black with no zippers or other ornamentation? What about the Orthodox Jewish women of Brooklyn who have very strict dress requirements and even must shave their own hair and wear wigs instead as a sign of humility? Why does male genital mutilation in the form of circumcision remain acceptable because it is a Jewish practice but we condemn similar practices of female genital modification? And yes, I do understand that there are major degrees of difference involved, but there is also a core principle at point as well. There are millions upon millions of women in the Islamic world who have greater freedoms of dress and expression than the above women do, and yet we don’t label them as wrong. I am aware of the difference between legal requirements and religious proscriptions but I think the American hysteria about a head scarf if frankly silly and embarrassing. We make way too many assumptions without experiencing anything first hand or even refusing to accept the explanations and experiences of women who actually live the life, and we interpret action and behaviors outside of the cultural context in which they occur. Many, MANY, of the actions Americans consider entirely normal would be mortally embarrassing or offensive to much of the rest of the world, and yet I don’t think we would welcome condemnation from those outside of our own cultural norms because we behave differently, and yet we persist in doing this same thing to others. We insist on “exporting” democracy to cultures that have no tradition of it and may not want it, just because we think it works best, and perhaps it does for us, but it equally might not for another culture in another place.
As one woman in Saudi Arabia explained it, “I am totally taken care of as a woman. I am not expected to provide for myself. And if I get up late and don’t have my hair done or make up on, who will know? I can look like hell under my chador but you will never know. How much easier for me than for a Western woman who must always put herself on display to the opposite and even the same sex in some endless competition that age will ultimately cause her to loose anyway to be judged solely or at least primarily on her breasts, face, and hair? Bah! Besides, this way I can stare at an attractive workman all I want and who would know what I am looking at? And yet, I can remain mysterious and protected as I go about my business.” And when you think about it, doesn’t she have some valid points? Not being a classically beautiful person myself, I can see the attraction to not being judged by my appearance!

But more seriously, if you have a female child growing up in the world, how comfortable are you with the American cultural messages she receives and internalizes whether you know it or not? Have you compared the rates of eating disorders and body dysmorphic syndromes between Muslim and Western nations? How many Muslim women need to risk pain and infection to have their breasts pumped up with saline or silicone to satisfy some male imagined ideal? Why is it that girls in school are judged more important if they are a brainless cheerleader than class valedictorian? Shouldn’t that be of concern to us all? Shouldn’t it concern us that girls are fed daily images in the print and visual medias of women who represent less than 0.1% of the genetic, starvation, drug induced, and surgically altered possibilities? I am not advocating a wholesale overhaul of the Western way of life, but perhaps in the respect that while a Muslim woman may choose to wear Victoria’s Secret underwear, she isn’t being judged based on whether she looks like the women in the catalog, she is ahead of the Western curve, so to speak. And then there is Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed to consider who is certainly revered and not downtrodden by any means. But I will now give it a bit of a rest. And I heard that collective sigh of relief!

I suppose the genesis of a great deal of this thought was the walk to the Blue Mosque. One quickly discovers that there is a lot of blue in Islamic cultures, including these blue glass eyes that you see literally everywhere, especially hanging above doorways. They are designed to ward off bad luck or the Evil Eye, and lest you think they are mere tourist ticky-tack, our hotel had a huge one over its front door as well as most restaurants and shops. In Islamic cultures, blue is considered to be the color which represents safety and protection from harm, so I suppose it would make sense that it would appear frequently in mosque design. And thank you to Clarice for asking about why blue was so predominant that prompted me to go and find out!

The Blue Mosque is not the largest mosque in Istanbul, that honor belongs to the mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, which is currently being renovated, but you would be hard pressed to miss it since it does dominate the skyline of the old city. The Blue Mosque is considerably older and yet it is still an active mosque. There were distinctive entrances for Muslims and non-Muslims, but everyone must remove their shoes and place them either in slots outside or carry them with you in the free provided plastic bags. The interior tiles are indeed a lovely blue but I think the thing about a mosque that might most surprise a person who has never been to one is the sheer simplicity of them. There is very little interior decoration aside from calligraphic quotes from the Koran. There are not seats or chairs, everyone kneels on the carpets. Islam is a very personal religion in the sense that in general there is not a set sermon, rather people pray individually although in a group, and after than they may, or may not, choose to stay and hear an imam speak or ask theological questions of the imam in residence. The building, while simple, is still beautiful and awe-inspiring in the method of its multi-dome construction.

But the things about the mosque that struck me the most were on the outside. There are long rows of taps with stone stools and you will see men having removed their shoes and socks washing their feet, as well as their legs, arms, and hands for it is required by Islam that one be clean before entering to pray. These taps are found at every mosque it seems and their origin comes from a time when there was no such thing as indoor plumbing and this requirement is also the origin of the Turkish public steam bath, the hamam, about which I will write more later. Mosques also have, or had, hospitals attached to them for the care of the ill and kitchens for the feeding of the poor and hungry. In essence, the traditional mosque was not only a place of worship; it was a public services center!
Baris explained to us the five pillars of Islam. These being:
1. There is no God but Allah and Mohammed was his LAST prophet (emphasis mine and explained in a bit)
2. Pray five times daily
3. If financially possible, make the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca
4. Give alms to the poor
5. Obsere the fast during the month of Ramadan where you do not eat, drink, or smoke during daylight hours

And that’s it. Notice that there is no injunction to kill non-believers, and in fact, the Koran specifically states to not molest or harm the people of the Book, meaning the Jews or Christians, because they are holy as well. In fact, in Iran, along with Islam, the other religions allowed by the state are Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Again, one must understand that the issue with the right of Israel to exist has to do primarily with its geographic placement and how it came into being, NOT because Islam is inherently anti-Semitic.

Admittedly, we did not notice people stopping their lives five times a day to pray, not even on Friday, the Muslim holy day, but you will without doubt hear the call to prayer five times daily since the muezzins use loudspeakers these days and I don’t believe they are any longer required to be blinded to prevent them from accidently seeing into someone’s harem from the minaret towers. Over time, since we slept with the window open nightly, I grew accustomed and even fond of being awakened every morning at 6:30am by the call to prayer. And in the book seller’s bazaar, for there is decidedly more than one bazaar, I admit that I bought my own copy of the “Glorious Koran” and even a set of sandalwood prayer beads, that if nothing else smell good and are fun to play with when nervous or bored.

About that LAST prophet bit: Often, the English translation of part of the Islamic prayer reads as “Mohammed was his Prophet” or “Mohammed was his only Prophet.” Both are incorrect and it is important to understand that the correct wording is last Prophet. The reason for this is because like it or not, the Yahweh of the Jews, God of the Christians, and Allah of the Muslims is all the same deity, and most likely derives from Amun Ra, the Sun God of Egypt. I know many religious people don’t like to share any at all, but many decades of comparative mythology and religious study have verified this to be the case. And, in Islamic theology, such familiar figures as Abraham and Moses for example are rather huge in the story of the creation of the world, as is the Garden of Eden, hence the Tree of Life which Tim SHOULD have known about, along with just about everything else in the Old Testament. Jesus is recognized by Muslims as a great Prophet but they do not accept him as the Son of God, nor do the Jews nor do I for that matter. The point here is that the primary difference between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is who came last, who was or was not the Son of God, but at the end of the day, you are all praying to and believing in the same God! It strikes me that you all are quibbling, often to deadly effect, over some minor doctrinal issues when if the big kahuna is the same dude, the rest sort of seems minor to me. But explain that to a Sunni versus a Shia, which I won’t even get into, and even I realize that religion and religious people are by definition not rational.

Perhaps Baris, the son of an imam after all, had the best explanation of the purpose of religion, for he claimed that regardless of what brand name of faith you profess or practice, the ultimate purpose is the same: the control of the human ego. Think about that one for a while, I mean really think about it, and you know, perhaps he is right.

One of the ways the Turkish government keeps a lid on religion is by providing the funds for religious buildings of all types. So, if you want to build a new mosque, church, or synagogue, you apply for the funds through the Turkish government. This way, individual religious leaders, nor individual congregations, cannot gain extraordinary power or wealth.

After the Blue Mosque, we headed to the Basilica Cistern, which is an underground water storage tank, essentially, that is unbelievably huge and mostly drained of water today to allow tourists both foreign and domestic, to visit for the primary purpose of admiring the architecture and the columns that support the roof. The cistern was designed to help the city withstand siege, usually sieges mounted by Christian crusaders on the way to the Holy Land who were of course besieging an already Christian city, but it had been a long hot ride with no treasure, so what the heck, one city does as well as another even if they are technically NOT the infidel. The reasoning for the Crusades is a totally different matter that I think people should better understand than they do, but I will be brief by explaining that they were a device of the Papacy in times of plenty to control growing, and restive, peasant populations and armies that might get ideas about some wealth sharing that wasn’t happening at the time. You don’t have to take my word for it either, any reliable non-ecumenical world history book will explain the same point.

Anyhow, the cistern was built very quickly and they used columns recycled from Greek temples to build it. When Tim expressed his amazement that the Turks went all the way to Greece to get the columns, the teacher in Baris came out when he practically chastised Tim for not realizing that the Greek empire, and thus Greek temples, stretched into Anatolia and the European part of what is now Turkey in the times before Christ! The Greeks certainly know this. Once again, shame on Timothy’s much vaunted superior education, whereas I was well aware of this, and I could also accurately identify the three types of columns on view as Doric, Ionic, and Corinithian, again thanks to Margaret Land! Needless to say Baris was impressed and I got an A+ in the Cistern. One will also immediately notice a fairly significant number of fish in the cistern waters, which are the ancestors of the fish originally placed there by the builders of the Cistern to serve as first line detectors of a poisoned water supply. Lots of dead fish meant you probably better have a slave test the water first! Consider them aquatic canaries in the coal mine. The most famous attraction in the Cistern are two Medusa heads which were used to make otherwise too short columns tall enough to serve the purpose. They were put at the base of the short columns, one sideways and one upside down, and they draw all the visitors in the Cistern to view them. Naturally, teacher Baris asked if one of us knew the story of Medusa, and of course at this point you know Tim had no idea other than that she had snakes for hair, but I knew why, who she had offended, how she was hunted and killed, in GREAT detail. Again this impressed Baris and I sort of trailed off and truncated the story of Perseus because I could tell that I had made my point. The credit for this bit of knowledge goes to one of my favorite childhood books, picked up at a second hand bookstore in Porterville, that retold popular Greek myths for children, but eventually I would re-read the expanded story in Edith Hamilton, Robert Graves, and in Bullfinch as well.

Immediately after the Cisterns is when we first had the carpet buying experience, which I have already relayed. But a general comment about vendors is appropriate here. I don’t care who you are or what you think you look like, every Turkish vendor worth his lira is going to know you are not Turkish and he will inevitably stop you in the street with methods sometimes subtle and clever, like signing a guest book, or more frequently than not, using the very direct question, “How can I help you spend your money today?” They are very serious for this is how they make their living and there is absolutely no point in getting your knickers in a twist about the tactics, because if you are going to have that reaction, you really should stay home. We developed a rapport with the vendors we walked past daily knowing they would want us to shop with them, knowing we didn’t want to, but never saying that for that would be rude, instead saying perhaps another day. Politeness will earn you a far more enjoyable experience, I assure you.

However, the most memorable tactic we encountered had to be the kebapci worker who literally flung his arms out and prevented us from passing on the sidewalk. This was done, you must note, with great humor, a huge smile, and laughter, but we took him up on it. My reason for it was simple: fresh squeezed pomegranate juice! There are lots of juice bars in Istanbul and they actually have real pomegranates by the bushel waiting to be pressed right in front of you by a rather red stained gentleman who will present with a glass of the purest, freshest stuff I have had since I was a child and grew up literally surrounded by pomegranate trees, all now pulled out and replaced with either houses or goats, depending on which side you look. Pressing pomegranates for juice was something I did as a child in the front yard in only my bathing suit because it was such a messy process, but worth the results. So, chicken kebab and fresh pomegranate for lunch, what could be better? The only thing better I would find would be the sour cherry juice. In Muslim countries, fruit juices are popular because of the general prohibition, admittedly widely ignored, against alcohol.
Turkish food took a bit of adjustment for me I will admit. I love the grilled meats and I was OK that everything came with tomato slices or quarters. I especially loved the spicy sausage kebabs, but aside from that, I can’t say that I really fell in love with the food except for maybe the Turkish delight candy. If you have never had it, it is a jellied candy sold in either square chunks or in big slices off of huge reels in the bazaar. The tourist junk is made with sugar, while the real thing is made with honey, and believe me, when you taste the two side by side, you WILL know the difference.

Given that Istanbul is surrounded on three sides by water you would expect fish and other seafood to figure large in the culinary scene, and it does. In fact, we had fish for dinner on our first night and to my surprise you do indeed get a fish, the WHOLE fish from the head to the tail, all grilled and nicely presented, but I still don’t like an eye looking at me from my dinner plate. I have no issue eating food with faces, I just expect the face to be removed before I eat it! Later we would have the freshest and most wonderful fish sandwiches ever, grilled right in front of your face with no question as to freshness. The sandwiches were simple, nothing more than fish, lemon, and bread, along with the ubiquitous tomato, but they were utterly delicious. That followed with homemade Turkish ice cream made for my idea of a perfect lunch!

It is practically impossible to not do a fair amount of shopping in Istanbul and we did as most all of you have seen from the photo. I think most people have heard of the Turkish bazaar but what you may not realize is that there are at least four different ones in Istanbul. The Arasta Bazaar was built concurrently with the Blue Mosque and as you might therefore expect, it is very close to it. The concept of the bazaar is simple in that merchants expanded their awnings, and then eventually their porch roofs to make arched coverings over merchant streets so that shoppers didn’t have to content with rain, cold or other inclement weather. Arasta is decidedly touristy and not as much fun in my opinion as the other two, but worth a visit, and yes I confess that I didn’t leave empty handed but instead came away with some ceramic tiles and the two obligatory T-shirts. I don’t recall if I have mentioned that Turks are very honest people, but they certainly are, to a fault even, and the young man selling us the T-shirts was very clear about what size we would need because of our size. He was polite about it, but also very clear!

There is of course also the famous Grand Bazaar that is closer to the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent. It is a gigantic labyrinth of a place that one can easily get lost in. There are “sections” of sorts that specialize in different things ranging from cheap clothing to copperware to antiques, real and otherwise, jewelry, especially gold, as well as silver and precious stones. It is a very touristy place and I doubt that one would find many real bargains in the place, but for the atmosphere of it, and because it was pouring rain outside, it was an OK place to spend a little bit of time. When you come out of the Grand Bazaar on the northeast side, you will find that you are now in the hardware store district of the city!

For my money and time though, the Egyptian, or Spice, Bazaar was the spot. With only two intersecting streets it was easy to navigate and as the name implies you can purchase just about any spice or tea or other concoction you can imagine, along with carpets, ceramics, more jewelry, more candy, caviar, and who knows what all else. Again, it is clearly a tourist destination, but one of its pluses is that immediately outside of any of its doors the shopping continues, but clearly intended for the locals. Take away the candy and the jewelry and substitute piles of tomato paste, housewares, vine leaf wrappers to simplify dinner preparation, appliances, fresh fish, other vegetables, halvah (a candy made of sesame paste and lots of sugar which I adore) and all the things that a true Turkish household needs minus the tourist tack. It was another world and I have to confess that I loved it so much I went twice! One advantage of this is that the shopkeepers will remember you and they give you better prices the second time around.

There was one stall in particular that captured a fair amount of both our time and our lira in that it sold spices but also fruit teas and candy. The gentleman helping us was charming, of course, and encouraged us to part with as much money as he could. They had jars of blue stones that looked all the world to me like chunks of copper sulfate, although in reality I have no idea what they were. When asked what they were for, we were told they were to carry about for good luck and we were each given one for free. I confess I tasted it since it was in a spice store, but clearly based on the wretched taste and the quick offers of copious amounts of water, coffee, and tea, I was NOT supposed to have done that, and admittedly, when I had asked if it was to be eaten, I had been told no, but there could have been an error in translation, so being semi-stupid on occasion, I did exactly as I was told not to and suffered for it!

Our next meeting with Baris was to tour Topkapi Palace, the home of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire as well as the seat of government for the Empire until well into the 19th Century when a newer palace was built at great expense and debt, which furthered the decline of the Empire and placed it into the debt of the European powers. Much of Topkapi is closed for renovation, but the massive scale and grandeur of the place is palpable regardless. Most impressive will of course likely be the treasury rooms in which the Sultan’s clothes are preserved along with his magnificent collection of jewels and gifts from all the heads of state of the time, including Queen Victoria, other European monarchs and the Emperors of Japan and China. These gifts bear witness to the former grandeur and importance of the Ottoman Empire as a world power to be courted and appeased. Of course the behavior of some of the later sultans combined with an ill-advised alliance with Germany during World War I ended all of that, leaving France and Britain to divide up the spoils of the former Empire under the guise of League of Nations mandates, which of course went a large way to creating the messes we now know as Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine.

The prize of the treasury is the so-called Spoonmaker’s Diamond, an 86-carat behemoth pear shaped diamond supposedly found on a trash heap by a beggar who sold it to a spoon maker for 3 silver spoons, which I guess seemed pretty good to a beggar if you didn’t know what you had found. The true origins of the stone are of course not known for certain, but most likely it originated in India. Regardless, it is almost unbelievable to see.

Of greatest significance to Muslims though is the reliquary of Mohammed that is housed in the palace. Included here are the supposed imprint of Mohammed’s foot, the hairs of his mustache, one of his teeth, and several of his supposed swords. Baris doesn’t believe in the authenticity of these relics, but clearly many do. But also included are items you might not expect if you are not aware of the links between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, such as the skull, arm, and hand of John the Baptist along with the sword of David. The final room of the reliquary contains the Korans of various Sultans, and there is an imam reading from the Koran continuously in this room. Since practically no Turks can read or speak Arabic, the technically only legitimate language of the Koran as all translations are disregarded by the truly faithful, there are television monitors that translate the imam’s readings into both Turkish and English for the benefit of visitors.
The reliquary is of course considered sacred space, so women are provided scarves to cover their heads if they don’t have their own, but unlike mosques, we were allowed to keep our shoes on.

We asked Baris if the relics didn’t more appropriately belong in Mecca, and while he agreed that the Saudis certainly thought so, the Turks believed that as a more stable nation they were in a better position to protect them and there the disagreement stands.

If I haven’t said so already, and even if I have it bears repeating, I think the Turks are one of the kindest and most courteous of all people in the world that I have ever met. Of course kindness to strangers and travelers is also a tenet of Islam, coming from the desert tradition where refusing aid to a stranger might mean his death from dehydration or starvation, perhaps this shouldn’t surprise me, but in comparison to the observed behavior of Americans to visitors to our country, especially in airports, I must admit that I am appalled and ashamed by typical American rudeness and disregard for others. As one example of Turkish courtesy, at the end of the Topkapi Palace tour, Baris assured us that while Istanbul was a very safe city, and indeed I never once felt threatened, that if we found ourselves in any trouble at all, to just give him a call on his cell phone and he would help us out! And that from a man that we spent perhaps all of 3-4 hours total time with and I have no doubt in my mind that he was 100% sincere.

After Topkapi Palace, we set out on our own in search of a former church, now a mosque, known as the little Ayasofya, having been built around roughly the same time in roughly the same design but on a much smaller scale. Getting to this place seemed easy enough on the map, but the reality of Istanbul streets caused us to get lost in what was clearly a poorer area of town. And while we were clearly objects of curiosity to children playing soccer in the streets, there was never any feeling of menace or threat, and honestly I can tell you that I have felt plenty of that in cities in the US including Atlanta, Bakersfield, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, among others. The American assumption of insecurity abroad and safety at home both saddens and entertains me in relatively equal portions.

We eventually found what we believed to be the mosque we were searching for, but in fact it wasn’t at all. Nonetheless, the caretaker, who clearly didn’t speak English nor us Turkish, made us welcome, after removing our shoes of course, and allowed us to view his mosque and even sold us a set of postcard photos of it for a mere pittance of a donation. I don’t know that I can describe what it was about the experience that was so special other than that this was not a tourist spot, this wasn’t a place accustomed to entertaining Westerners, and yet we were welcomed anyway, shown great courtesy, and treated with respect and gratitude for our donations. Sadly, it seemed a most un-American experience but gladly a most familiar Turkish one.

Eventually we would find the “little Ayasofya” and if you go to Istanbul, I highly recommend making the effort to find it. At the time we were the only visitors and the caretaker was very kind and helpful, again without speaking a word of English. He turned on the lights so that Tim could take photos. He gestured us up to the balcony area for views of the Sea of Marmara and down into the mosque itself. He took us up another set of stairs to point out the detailed carving and fretwork that was done on the marble friezes surrounding the first level of the dome. He also pointed out to us columns on which Christian crosses had been converted to Orthodox crosses and then columns on which the marble crosses had been removed completely when the building was converted to a mosque. But the greatest and most unexpected surprise was when he knelt down and pulled back the carpet to reveal Plexiglas covering excavations that went down several feet to reveal the original mosaic tile floor of the original building from untold centuries in the past. I think it very important to note here that this building is not a museum and there is no admission fee. It is a working mosque in a poorer working class neighborhood that happens to be an architectural and historical gem waiting to be found a bit off the well trod tourist path. And there is no entrance fee, just a voluntary donation box if you wish. Again, for the third time in the space of only a few hours I was struck by the courtesy and grace of the Turks in their willingness to share with us their heritage and cultural treasures for nothing more than a smile and a nod of thanks.

That night we had dinner in a pub close to the hotel that Tim had seen. I think he really was just attracted to the sign that promised two for one Efes beer more than anything else honestly, so we tried it. The food was fine and we even tried mezzes, which are small servings of different foods, most all vegetarian in nature, most similar to Spanish tapas. The origin of the Turkish mezzes dates back to the days of the Ottoman sultans who learned of the practice of having food tasters eat small portions of their meals first to check for poison. Now, mezzes are just a part of a Turkish meal, or they may constitute the entire meal in some cases if you wish. We would return to this pub, again for the two for one Efes beer, and yes I know Islam technically prohibits drinking, but the Turks don’t seem overly concerned with that either, and we discovered that the pub didn’t actually have a kitchen! Instead, the pub owner would take our order next door to have it cooked and bring it back. When Tim asked for baklava for desert, the pub man said sure, and soon enough, after a phone call, a young man from a nearby bakery, dressed all in baker’s whites, showed up carrying the requested pastry, which the pub owner took out of the box and arranged on a plate for Tim prior to presentation. Now, in my experience in the US, if you ask for something the restaurant doesn’t have, such as baklava in this case, the answer is at best a polite, no we don’t have that. But in Turkey, there is no “no!” You just pick up the phone, dial the order in, and the customer gets what he wants! Really, was that so hard now?

A word about baklava: If you have only had it in the US, you haven’t had it. Period. I used to think I didn’t like it until I ate it in Turkey where it is made with real honey and LOTS of real pistachios, and where it comes in at least 15 different varieties, probably more. It is next to divine. We bought some to bring home, and I think I ate one piece, but since I was quite sick with a respiratory infection upon our return, someone, Tim of course, managed to eat all of the baklava before I was fully conscious or had any appetite again. But that was OK, because even though I liked the Turkish version of the baklava, Tim found heaven. And who am I to deny him a little bit of that?

On our second visit to the pub, we were invited into the inner room where the owner’s friends from Germany and Japan were eating, on the principle that the first visit makes you a guest, the second visit makes you family. This is the sort of pub where folks were outside smoking something in a hookah pipe, I don’t know exactly what, but I do know American Customs won’t let you bring a real one into the country as they consider them “drug paraphernalia.” The other guests and us toasted Obama’s victory, agreed that Bush was a war monger, and when we asked about the pending EU application for Turkey, they were generally dismissive saying that “the moon will be admitted first.” And yet, this didn’t seem to particularly upset them, it just seemed to be their individual take on the situation lubricated with a bit of beer and whatever was in the hookah. All told, it certainly beat out the next night’s dinner when we accidentally ended up watching the, get this one, Turkish version of Wheel of Fortune. I kid you not, and once again, I was mortified to discover what America really exports to the world.

Bridging Europe and Asia

On one of our last days in Istanbul we caught the 10:30am ferry that travels all the way up the Bosporus Straights to the entrance to the Black Sea. It isn’t a cruise liner, just a medium size ferry boat, but it travels waters that have a history that stretches back into the times of myth with Jason and the Argonauts and Medea. The entire length of the Bosporus belongs to Turkey and if you forget that, there are gigantic Turkish flags every so often to clearly remind you. The sailing takes about 1.5 hours, the waters were calm, and there are young men running about selling apple tea and Turkish coffee, and we even were lucky enough so sight dolphins leaping alongside the boat. By the way, should you ever drink Turkish coffee, remember that it is very strong and that the grounds are in the bottom of your cup, so when it starts getting gritty to drink it, stop, you have finished the drinkable part. But of course drinking tea and coffee means that one will have to urinate eventually, especially with the motion of the boat. Now, I have described the toilet in our hotel but now I will introduce you to a more common variety of Turkish toilet. Essentially what you have is a hole in the floor or ground, in this case in the floor of the boat, with white ceramic foot rests on either side that are nicely and deeply grooved, presumably to help you maintain a grip. Now, being male and only having to urinate, this was really a simple point and shoot operation, but I do have many female friends and I realize that this wouldn’t be the case for you. So, I did have a moment of sympathy imagining what it would have been like had one had to squat down, on a moving vessel no less, while maintaining one’s balance. Suffice it to say, I was really happy once again to be male! Oh, yeah, there isn’t any toilet paper either. Instead there is a tap with a smallish, in this case blue, pitcher. The idea is that you fill the pitcher and use that to “flush” as well as to clean yourself, only with the left hand though which is the hand customarily used to clean the private parts of the body. This is why you only eat with your right hand. Fortunately prior to confronting this arrangement, I had heard of them and knew the basic operating parameters. We would find the same style repeated on the Asian side of the mainland.

The boat docks at a small village right at the entrance to the Black Sea on the Asian side of the Bosporus which sports the ruins of a 15th century Genoese fortress on a hilltop from which the Genoese no doubt tried, or succeeded for some period of time, to control access to and from the Black Sea until being ousted by the Turks. The village is, as I said, small, and it consists mainly of fish restaurants vying for what little winter business there is. This is the village where we had the fish sandwiches and ice cream. We also had tea and baklava, walked about, shopped at the one store in town which sold everything from school supplies to thread and everything else in between in a space half the size of my living room. Unlike in Istanbul, when the call for prayer came about, most everything except the tourist restaurants on the dock closed down. Some of the town’s cats were friendly here and there were geese honking quite madly at a fisherman mending his nets, presumably because they expected his appearance to herald the arrival of fish guts and they couldn’t discern that he was simply mending his nets and not in the business of providing food. The ferry returns 3 hours after it docks, making all the same stops, and getting one back to Istanbul by 4:30pm or so. It was a wonderful outing full of history and the romance of one of the world’s most famous ocean straights.

As I noted long ago in this narrative, the vendors on the street will recognize and remember you over time, such that every time you pass them they continue to banter with you. One of these vendors represented a leather factory, and since we were consistently wearing our Jos. A. Banks brown leather jackets, we couldn’t exactly deny that we wore leather. Every time the guy saw us he wanted to take us to his factory and every time we promised another day. Finally, we promised to buy no leather until we visited his factory, and we didn’t. On our return from the Bosporus cruise, we went looking for him, he found us, and away we went.

There is no way anyone would ever have found their factory and showroom since it was on the second floor of a more modern building on the opposite side of the Hippodrome. The guy who took us to the factory was of course just the “tout,” the owner’s son-in-law in this case, so our actual sales dealings would occur with at least two other men, one the co-owner and naturally the ubiquitous coffee/tea server boy who was also dispatched to show us many different styles and colors of jackets. Now, I have to be clear that upon walking in to the store we really did NOT intend to buy four jackets. Granted, we can share them since we are roughly the same size, Tim’s arms are just a bit longer than mine, but still, what two men need with four new leather jackets defeats me, especially considering that weeks may pass with us not leaving home and getting dressed usually means changing sleep pants and T-shirts! Seriously, Tim is wearing his penguin sleep pants and a white T-shirt and I am wearing my Land’s End flannel plaid with matching green T-shirt set sold on clearance a few weeks before we left. So fashionistas we are NOT.

But, the jackets were lovely, three of lamb leather, one of cow, and all with zip out linings that include wool collars for snug warmth on those colder days but convertible to something lighter when not so cold. And they looked nice on, they felt wonderful, and the tea and the coffee, and the chatter, it lulls you into a spending/buying mood. Seriously, US vendors really could learn a lot from Turkish methods. Imagine you go into, I don’t know, I like Brook’s Brothers say (I can’t afford them, but I like them) and instead of pawing through the racks having slight coronary attacks at the price tags, instead someone sat you on comfortable couches, gave you tea or coffee, chatted about inane things with you, then gradually started to assess your tastes and desires, and then after about 30 minutes or so, started to bring items to you to look at, to try on, and nothing has a price tag of course, so you can’t faint right away. Well, I wouldn’t try on a jacket with a $500+ price tag for fear I might really like it. BUT, if you have already been wearing it, admiring yourself in it in the mirror, and loving the feel of it, well, then it starts to seem a whole lot harder to walk away without it. Trust me on this one, it works really well.

Over the course of our stay in the factory, we noticed that some of the men would come and go. At one point the sales manager excused himself to go pray at the mosque but assured us he would return in less than 30 minutes, which he did. Later, the tailor agreed to stay late to alter one jacket for me, on site and we have photos of him working, but first he asked the boss for permission to go and pray at the mosque as well. These leather sellers were more devout than other merchants we met, or perhaps we were just there at the evening prayer time. At the end of the meeting, we walked away with our four jackets, or actually, the tea/coffee/general fetch-it boy walked back to the hotel with us carrying our bags with us up to our room! This would also happen when we bought two carpets. Now, tell me, when is the last time a salesperson in NYC or wherever, carried your purchases to your room for you? That’s what I thought, never happens in this country. The leather dealer also gave us a much better price for cash because credit card service fees to the merchant can be as much as 8%, which we know ourselves to be true, so the boy also took the additional $450 of cash which we didn’t have on hand at the time, but note that the merchant let us leave his shop with $450 worth of goods unpaid for on a fair degree of faith. And as I said, once you conduct business, you are at least friends from then on, so the next day we were greeted in the street on our way to dinner by this very same leather seller who explained to us that he was on his way to catch his ferry home to the Asian side, asked where we were having dinner, were we continuing to enjoy ourselves, etc. At first it was surprising, and then I realized that of course it was just the Turkish way.

Now, I have to mention one particular jacket in the store that was clearly for women but it totally captured my attention because it seemed to be literally screaming to me, “I belong to Melissa Athie!” Now, I realize not all of you know who she is, but some of you do, and she is, eventually, reading this herself. For those who don’t know, she was a writer who worked with me on the CDC project, she is brilliant, she is stunningly beautiful, and despite the blond hair, she speaks fluent Spanish and is married to a man who stepped out of the pages of Latin QC. She is so blessed with perfection in her life in every way that you want to hate her, but she is so incredibly sweet and sincere and I swear totally doesn’t realize how fabulous she or her life actually is (she was totally mystified why flight attendants, male and female, would give her husband free drinks or move him to First Class while ignoring or being rude to her, that I actually had to explain why!) that you can’t help but love her. Oh yeah, and she is a certified Zumba instructor, which means she teaches a form of Latin dance aerobics. Are you getting the idea now? Beautiful, smart, sexy, accomplished…are you grinding your teeth in envy? You should be! Anyway, as I said, I am no fashionista, OK; I know NOTHING about women’s fashion or clothes except that I don’t wear them. I buy my clothes primarily off of tables at Costco. I mean, I can clean up and be presentable when required and yes I own some suits and even two tuxedos, but seriously I let the sales people dress me for those occasions, I have no taste of my own. But this jacket was cut sort of like a suit coat and was made out of chartreuse-like green leather that sounds like it should have been hideous, even though it really wasn’t, I don’t think, and it captured my total attention as being something I could so see Melissa wearing. I even took two pictures of it, and having sent one to her and having had no reply from her about it, it could be that she hated the jacket and will never speak to me again! LOL! I hope not, but we shall see.

I have mentioned the young and charming Kurdish carpet seller with the state quarters map several times, he who sold us two carpets although it would have been three if I could have gotten away with it, and it was on his recommendation that we embarked on one of the most uniquely Turkish experiences we would have, the hamam, or traditional Turkish steam bath. We had described how we had been moving about non-stop in Istanbul, our muscles were sore and tired, and we wanted to just relax. The carpet seller described how once when moving to a new house the water wasn’t working yet so he and his family used the hamam, everyone in Turkey did this, and it was not a problem.

OK, maybe it wasn’t a problem for him, but for me this seemed like the impossible proposition. First of all, I don’t think most Americans think of bathing as a public exercise, segregated by gender or not. The only time Americans bathe as a group is at the gym or when they were in high school gym class! It isn’t something you do to relax! Well, some men do, but that is a totally different issue and environment and I certainly WASN’T about to sign up for that. But we were assured this was nothing like that at all, to the limits of the carpet seller’s ability to relate to what I was trying to describe I was afraid of without resorting to being vulgar. To top all that off, I have horrible body image issues due to the ravages of my disease and even worse due to the ravages of some of the drugs that actually keep me alive so that I more effectively loathe my own appearance. And no, for once, I am really not exaggerating. It is amazing how one can shower, shave, and get dressed and never, and I mean NEVER, actually allow oneself to look in a mirror. I mean come on, I SLEEP fully clothed. So, considering all of that, for me to go to a public bath was just about equivalent to moving the planets with only your thumb! Well, somehow, the planets moved, I gathered up my courage and we went for it.

The hamam we were directed to is about five centuries old with an interior made entirely of white marble. The way this works is that you pay your fee at the front desk and then an attendant escorts you to a changing cubicle when you strip down and wrap a special towel made for hamam bathing (you can buy them outside the bazaars in the areas meant for real Turks not tourists), and slip into plastic sandals. Now you gather all of your courage and trod downstairs where you quickly realize that no one is paying a bit of attention to you! Like I said, this is a traditional Turkish method of pampering oneself or of just satisfying the ritual cleanliness rite of Islam, especially on a Friday, so no big deal to them, they have been doing this for centuries, in fact, they inherited the idea from the Romans. Your attendant will take you through the “warm” room into the “hot” room where you will be left to sit in the heat and sweat out your impurities. The hot room is dominated by an enormous roughly 30 foot diameter dome of white marble about 2 feet off the floor under which a fire is burning. You lay or sit on this dome like a giant stone heating pad. If you lay on your back you will then notice that you are staring some 50 to 60 feet up into a marble dome with small skylights cut into it that provide natural light. Around the edges of the dome, are small marble basins with tabs and metal bowls that you use to wash and rinse yourself with the soap and shampoo they will have provided to you. It is important to note that at all times you keep the towel on and the genitals covered, even when bathing. The towel will be sopping wet, sure, but it isn’t transparent when wet. You can choose to do the bathing part yourself, and if you do this, you should take great care not to splash others, especially not the faithful on Fridays because if a non-believer should splash water on them, they would have to start the bathing process over again as they would now be ritually unclean. But, the more interesting way to do the hamam experience is to hire the attendant to bathe, shampoo, and massage you in the hot room. And these guys mean business! They use a rough mitt to scrub dirt off you didn’t even know you had, and in Tim’s case he was apparently either very filthy or was still peeling from sunburn in Easter Island because his attendant showed him strips of skin that were coming off! These guys clean in between your fingers and your toes, your ears, they drown you with rinse water and then they lead you blinded with soap over to the basins to wash your hair for you, followed by more copious rinses. Now they lay you back down on the hot dome and use soap suds to give you a bone breaking massage/chiropractic treatment in that they will pop your back several times. My attendant actually turned me face down, put a towel on my back and WALKED on me! I had only ever seen that done on The Jefferson’s, and this guy was bigger than George! By the time he led me to a private shower stall and made it clear with hand gestures that I was now to wash my genitals and buttocks, which following the rules of propriety and modesty they do not touch nor do they expose during their process, I was as limp as overcooked pasta, but in a good and relaxed way. When done with that, your attendant takes you to a raised platform with a wall so that you may remove the wet bathing towel at which point, from behind you of course, he re-wraps you in a dry towel and provides a vigorous drying with another towel. At this point you are free to steam more, to stay in the warm room to relax, or to return to the lobby area for tea or coffee. Having never been to a spa in the US, I expect it is sort of like that but I don’t know for certain. What I do know is that perhaps in spite of what some Americans might expect, there is absolutely zero sexual overtone. It is a wonderful sensory experience but it is certainly not erotic in any way. Again, if you find yourself in Istanbul I would recommend that you take your courage in hand and try the hamam. I think most people would be pleasantly surprised. By the way, some hamams are for women only, or admit women only at certain times, some admit both men and women but keep the sexes separated at all times and use same gender attendants, while some of the very tourist oriented hamams go totally co-ed, which is very much NOT traditional Turkish. A Turkish woman would NEVER allow a strange man to bathe or massage her!

Our last day in the city it rained buckets and we limited our activities mostly to purchasing two cheap additional suitcases to bring home jackets and carpets. We did admittedly stop into one more shop that we had promised to visit since it was across the street from our hotel to have a look at some cashmere and other fun items. This vendor used to live in the United States where he made a tidy profit buying used cars on Ebay and then reselling them sight unseen to others with a more elaborate description than that given by the original seller. He would then give the shipping address of the person who had bought the car from him to the original seller as his own, thus never having to actually see or ship any car at all! He claims to have made at least $500 on each of these deals but was vague as to why he quit and moved back to run a small shop in Istanbul.

The return trip to the airport was quick and easy as there is an ocean-side freeway that runs from the old city out to the airport in about 15 minutes. Of course, being a travel geek, I was in awe of the amazing diversity of airlines and destinations being served out of Ataturk International that morning. I have never seen flights posted for Almaty, Tirana, or Tehran before! Security is tight, without doubt. All of your bags, checked and carry on, go through x-ray inspection before you even get near the check-in desks. At this point you can enjoy the Beverly Hills mall-like atmosphere of the airport shopping concourse, but believe it or not, we didn’t. Instead, I simply took advantage of what might be my last chance to have a can of sour cherry juice. We tried to run out to the boarding gate for the Iran Air flight to Tehran just to see who was boarding, but we were too late and everyone was on board already. See, I really am a travel geek. You go through security screening again to get near your gate, and then again to get to your actual gate area, so you and your carry on bags are scanned three times total. We tend to carry a powder laxative with us in case we get clogged while traveling, a much more likely occurrence for some reason for us than the more usual traveler’s lament, and this caused the Turkish security staff great concern to the point that they forced Tim to taste the contents of the bottle before they would let him pass. I was apparently randomly selected to be led off to a private room for a body search which consisted simply of being physically patted down, having the back of my pants pulled out to check for a concealed something I suppose, but given that I have no butt it seemed to me that anything I might have chosen to hide there would be immediately obvious. You sign your name on a clipboard sheet with lots of Turkish writing on it next to your passport number which might well say anything from I allege no mistreatment to admission of being an agent of evil and promising never to return to Turkey; no one made that part clear. Admittedly, it was a bit disconcerting at first since no reason for my selection was given and being locked alone in a small airport room with two armed Turkish soldiers wasn’t my idea of a vacation, but they were polite, did me no harm, and in the end, I suppose we should all be grateful for airport security given events that have transpired more than once in the world.

The return flight was smooth and uneventful, but since you leave at noon it is sort of hard to sleep. Fortunately, the predicted headwinds that would have made our flight 12 hours were absent meaning we arrived early into JFK. The point of our arrival in the US was when everything went to hell.

As any international traveler is aware, when you arrive in the United States you have to collect all of your baggage and go through Customs. In the Customs area for Delta Airlines at JFK is a large and loud woman who reads a script, continuously, telling you what to do. As we were flying Business Class, our bags are tagged for Priority handling meaning they should come off the belt first, and one of the four did. The other three however remained resolutely missing after everyone else had left to go through Customs. We asked the loud woman, who knew nothing for all she did was read a script. Her computer terminal was apparently a prop piece only. A baggage supervisor happened to be in the area and he called upstairs to see if our bags were still up there, but he was assured they were not, although they had all been scanned as having been put onto the belt at JFK Customs. So, his only advice to us was to continue to Atlanta because only the final destination can handle lost bag claims. His further thought was that since the bags had been scanned onto the JFK belt that perhaps another passenger had taken our bags. It was unbelievable to me that at this point I was expected to fly on to Atlanta with 3 out of 4 bags missing, including all three carpets and all four leather jackets and it further baffled me to realize that unlike in the long ago past, no one checks your baggage claim against what you are carrying out of the airport, making it relatively easy to take whatever you want and see what’s inside and hope you hit it lucky. Unbelievable! Furthermore, since we were bringing back goods totaling more than the $800 allowance, how were we supposed to go through Customs without our bags? Tim kept negotiating and talking, and finally someone upstairs in the baggage area noticed the alarm or whatever happens when a belt jams, which it had right at the beginning of the bag off-loading process, that had caused our bags to stay upstairs despite repeated claims that they were not. Welcome to the joys of unionized NYC baggage handlers.

At this point, Customs had made me proceed and Tim and I had been locked apart from one another, and as a security precaution cell phone signals are blocked, so I was on one side of locked doors and Tim on the other, neither having any idea what was happening with the other. I was hugely relieved when Tim appeared with an overflowing luggage cart with all of our found baggage.

Now, since we were early Tim wanted to change to the earlier Atlanta flight. On the other side of Customs is another Delta agent who will throw your checked bags onto the belt again to make your connecting flight but she was apparently not interested in doing one damn thing more than that. She had the ability to change our flights, but she clearly didn’t want to be bothered, instead she wanted to simply recite gate numbers, shake her beads, and not be bothered. First she tried to tell us that there was a change fee, which Tim disputed on the grounds of us being Platinum Medallion status. So bead shaking Shaniqua gets on the phone and verifies that we are correct and ultimately finds herself with no choice but to reseat us on the earlier flight, but she would have her revenge, wouldn’t she, since she refused to re-tag our bags claiming that the bar codes in the computer were updated and she didn’t have to re-tag the bags. And you guessed it, when we were waiting for our bags in Atlanta, they don’t show, no, they were still in JFK waiting for our original flight. We were told to go home and Delta would deliver the bags no later than midnight the following day. Now, I have had this happen before and yes the bags were delivered, but I have never been carrying several thousand dollars worth of rugs and jackets before either! So no way in hell was I going to let Delta’s Atlanta baggage crew, whom you can easily see in blatant inaction at any given time, try to find my house which doesn’t show up on any mapping programs! To say nothing of the clear ability of anyone waiting about to snag the four lonely bags circling with no one about to claim them. So, we waited in Atlanta for the arrival of our original flight, in the baggage area of course, since all Crown Rooms are on the opposite side of security and we had no valid boarding pass to use to get through security! Let’s just say that it was a long 90 minute wait but when the bags from our original flight came up on the belt, ours were indeed there and so ended the less than ideal end to the long journey home.

Despite the incredible stress and exhaustion that the baggage issues created, stretching the return journey to close to 24 hours, Istanbul remains one of the most memorable of all the journeys we have made thus far, at least in part I believe because the culture was different, in all ways positive differences, but still a new experience. And based on the positive experience of Istanbul and being amongst Islamic people I honestly look forward to additional travels in, at a minimum, Jordan, Syria, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and yes, even Iran, a nation and culture that fascinates me endlessly.

This is the longest piece of writing I have done since my Master’s Thesis, so Turkey clearly touched lots of chords in me, and I honestly expect it would in any of you as well. I intend to return to Turkey to explore the site of Troy, Cappadocia, and the Aegean coast someday, although of course someday remains exactly that at the moment with nothing set in stone beyond desire. We technically touched Asia, so now only one continent is left, that being Africa, for which we do not yet have a plan, but we will get there, of that I am certain.

We have several smaller trips planned for the coming months, but these mostly involve family or familiar places, so don’t expect more details until after the Alaska cruise of May!

Again, I thank all of you for your patience in slogging through my recollections. It helps make it all more real for me to be able to share it with those I love and care for, and I thank you for that gift you give me even if you don’t know you are giving it.

My advice to people is this: Be brave but not foolish, put aside your Fox News colored glasses and go out and meet the world on its terms for what it is, not what you have been told it is. My honest belief is that if more people did exactly that, the world would be a much more peaceful and pleasant place than it often is today, and I will continue to the limits of my ability to do my part to foster that.