visit istanbul

I have dreams about a place I’ve never been. Every year I get so close, wandering the Carpathians, drinking palinka, using my terrible Hungarian to chat with irredentists, patting Napsugar (“Sunshine,” my favorite sweet faced cow), kissing my godchildren. I never leave those now-my-own hills and low villages, except to cross the Puszta and rejoice in Budapest’s many bridges and sweet wine.

Yes, at home in the hills of Portland I dream about my Szekely self and hear the sound of bees in the hills above Karacsonyfalva, and sometimes I walk the streets of Kolozsvar and remember the marriage of brutal handsomeness and soft brown eyes in a long ago love…but more often I dream of this city of history and the smell of the Bosphorus. How do I know what the Bosphorus smells like? I don’t in daylight, but under my great-grandmother’s quilt, the black cat curled at my hip, in the darkest, softest hour of the night the smell comes to me in old familiarity, like the lilacs surrounding my childhood fort or the scent of my mother’s hair.

I must visit this place, I know that. And what I really imagine, though maybe now that I’m over the threshold of young adulthood and gaining fast on my middle years it’s a foolish dream, what I long to do is follow the path of Patrick Leigh Fermor. In 1933 Fermor walked from Holland to (then called) Constantinople. Some of the terrain he covered is as familiar to me as my daughter’s nape. Some I only dream about. I’m more than entranced by this idea of walking, dependent upon kindnesses and charity. (Well, he was a rich British boy and got an allowance, but that’s nothing my professional expenses couldn’t cover.) Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, and a little daunted by doing this alone. Maybe it’s because I am still raising my teenaged children, and can’t imagine the time commitment until they are older. Maybe it’s folly. But when I am truthful with myself that’s how I imagine arriving in Budapest…more than twelve months of dust and experience in the soles of my shoes, backwards into history in a way. Moving in the opposite direction from the Ottoman incursion. I might have to veer off to Belgrade, and hear the noontime bells in the place where they began.

Or I could join my friend Zsolt and his merry schoolchildren as they ride their bikes from Kolozsvar to Istanbul. That might be more endurable.

Perhaps the goal I should set for myself is this: If I haven’t walked the Fermor path by the time I’m 45 (random number, arrived at by thinking about the aging process of knees) I’ll take the train from Bucharest and get off two stops early, and then walk the rest of the way.

I found Istanbul to be a beautiful and friendly city. I was amazed by the Grand Bazaar and really enjoyed my visit to a hamaam.

To the Iranian border in just a few hours to apologize for my country and shake hands with the first Iranian I meet. I’m sure they won’t let me in, but it’s worth the bus ride just to show somebody that most Americans are something more compassionate and peaceful than what our foolish government would lead them to believe.

I’m most likely caught up in the moment, but I’ve realized just how much more fulfilling my life was when I lived overseas…away from petulant, brain-dead undergraduates who harbor delusions about their own profound nature. I don’t blame them. I once WAS them. But then I grew up and realized just how little I really know about anything. What a blessing such an epiphany is…

This trip has been an aphrodisiac for my soul. Back to Michigan in a few days…recharged, refocused, and remembering the roadmap to what once made me truly happy. That is all.

I am still fighting jet lag, and am writing from a little cafe on the banks of the Bosphorous whilst drinking a cup of turkish coffee. (Sweet and grainy.) Earlier I had apple tea. It was great. To my left two fellows with interesting hats are playing a spirited game of backgammon. This is my third time coming in here, and the same fellows keep playing and arguing, arguing and playing. There is something comforting and peaceful in that. Outside of the window, Nova Roma seems to be sleeping comfortably underneath all of her Islamic blankets.

Today I visited Justinian’s gift to us all. I sat on the cold floor and looked up toward the domes. The energy and power of history left me at a loss for words. A complete. loss. for. words.

...how I have missed the beauty and mystery of the places in between.

“What else do you love?” She asked…wistfully.
“Too many things to recount or even remember,” he replied.

”...but I do remember the desert, and I remember her there.”
-Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient

At a holiday party last night, a good friend told me that she always wondered what the sadness just at the edges of my smile and in the middle of my sometimes distant eyes was a result of. An acquaintance told me last week that she thought my personality was something akin to the rings on a tree…radiating out in a lot of different directions.

I suppose both assessments are true to an extent, but only with regard to the fact that both I and trees can sometimes be a bit dead in the middle. The Greeks had a word for this…”ψυχή” or “psyche.” In my Arabic study, the concept shows up as”روح”, or “ruh.” Regardless, it is the manifestation of the wandering soul the comes and goes from in and out of our corporeal bodies. Like the tree who is dead inside, but vibrant and alive externally, and the boy who projects his thoughts off into other places and times, the best soul is that which leaves you and comes back, in my opinion. Maybe that accounts for me zoning out into another time and place sometimes. Maybe it doesn’t.

I have these vivid dreams about the desert, and often I wonder if it is my soul telling me to return. Only those who do not understand its true nature believe that the desert is truly silent and empty. It is a vibrant place…full of life, vitality, and diversity in many places. And those places that are perhaps a bit more empty are but a blank canvas, waiting for someone to seek the secrets and beauty that await amongst the shifting sands. I’ll be in Istanbul in less than a day now…but I’ve got a bus ticket to return to places a bit more barren, open, sandy and deep. Once the wind of a wild place blows upon your face, it is difficult for any ordinary breeze to compare to that feeling again.

To the beauty of Nova Roma, and the peaceful moment of quiet pause that is another of my beloved places in between I return now. My eyes are full, my smile is genuine, and for the first time in a long time, I feel as if I am the living bark…not the empty core. Wake up, dreamers amongst the dunes…the body is catching up with the soul.

-Shantih, shantih, shantih…

I have a short five more days to wait until I board a plane and head east. I had a dream the other night that Constantine was my tour guide. Perhaps, in a way, he will be…

I visited Turkey about 7 years ago and it was a fantastic trip. The country is beautiful and I can’t say enough good things about my visit. I highly recommend it.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

-W.B. Yeats

Airplane tickets in the mailbox…always a good day.

My Sufi mystic friend told me some secrets of dervish whirling to-day, and I was happy, but at the same time quite dejected about the thought of the secular Turkish government driving the peace of the true Sufi mystic movement underground by outlawing them…telling them that if they’d like to practice the sacred sema, it would have to be done under the facade of a “folklore society.” Really excited to see the real thing, and not the tourist knockoff.

Whether it is the manner in which the Sufis wear a tangible tombstone to their ego on their heads, and in so doing become something larger than themselves…connected with the earth and the sky at the same time, or the idea of East meeting West and peacefully coexisting, there is something peaceful about the connectedness of Istanbul. Byzantium stood for over a thousand years, and now stands largely supplanted…the sick patient expired, reborn, and dressed in a sharply tailored new suit.

Behind the calligraphic facades, the minarets, and the glottal stops of the salat being called in the night, however, Nova Roma sleeps, and she remembers…

In memory, empire is an amazingly heavy burden to bear. In practice, it is an even heavier burden to shed. That is my purpose for being, and why I am an historian…to help us better listen to the lessons whispering to us from secret stones.

Can’t. Wait.

I bought my tickets today! Hooray! Can’t wait! More to come…

istanbul oozes with soul from its every crack in the pavement. i was there a few years ago, and it blew my mind. the fusion of historical and modern, art and culture—as much as they wanted to, my poor eyes couldn’t take all of it in those measly 5 days. i will return, by hook or by crook.