Istanbul 02: Travel Journal Except

Friday, May 16, 2008, Hotel Turkoman, Istanbul

After what seems and certainly feels like two lost days of traveling across continents and time zones, the beginnings of my third day in the same clothes due to a lost bag by the ever-incompetent American Airlines, I know why people don’t travel like this, like me. But sitting atop our hotel on the terrace over breakfast, overlooking the Bosporus Straits in front of me and the Sea of Marmara to my right, over strong coffee, after waking at 5:00 am by the call to prayer at the Blue Mosque across the street and a subsequent leisurely stroll around Hagia Sophia, and now surrounded by squawking seagulls who have nested on the roof, plates of dried fruits, sweet melons, and cakes topped with sesame, and spoken foreign languages, I cannot for the life of me figure out why people don’t travel more often, more like me.

We’re waiting to be joined by Chris and Mary before deciding on a plan for today. Cars and tour buses honking. A ship’s horn. The sun is breaking through and dispelling the haze over the water.

We saw a group of attractively dressed boys crossing the hippodrome on their way to school this morning. Seeing the beautiful Turkish lads reminded me of all those accounts about the sultan’s seraglio and how the conquering Ottomans fought over the choicest Byzantine girls and boys after breaching the walls of Constantinople in 1453. Runciman writes that even the Emperor’s godchildren were not spared: “The girl, Thamar, died [in the seraglio] while still a child; the boy was slain by the Sultan for refusing to yield to his lusts.”

Istanbul 01: Call to Prayer

Five times a day the call issues forth from the amplified speakers mounted atop the minarets. These days, the muezzin need not bother climbing the steps up the tower. Because of my training, I wonder (fully aware that I am alone in this) about the metaphysical implications of relying so on technology.

You hear the short buzz and click of the microphone being turned on before the call actually begins. Sometimes you can make out a word; most notable, of course: “Allah,” even though it’s stretched beyond comprehension like countless amen’s of so many Christmas carols.

We arrived too late the first night. Old Istanbul was fast asleep by the time our shuttle reached the hotel. In the morning—even earlier, perhaps, with jetlag and insomnia factored in—the call shocked me awake, but not before shifting my otherwise mundane dreams into vivid Technicolor animation about a drunken vampire. I wanted it to shut up, to go away.

But when the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii) is directly across the street from your hotel, just beyond the paved track of the ancient Byzantine hippodrome, it is up to you to get used to it.

When I see Arabic written, I think of snakes, thanks to Sonia, who, so many years ago, once referred to it as “that snake language.” Every letter looks like a serpent—some with eyes, some with curved tails. Each hissing out the mysterious beauty of that ancient desert tongue. Hearing it—and I’m only assuming that the liturgical language of Turkey is (still) Arabic—made me think of snakes flying through the air, twisting their way into the ears of the devotees.

The call lasts for several minutes. At times, it seems endless, and at other times, abrupt and too quickly ended. And the echoes across Istanbul from the other mosques make it seem even more enigmatic and not of this world.

The evening call retained its splendor and sublimity throughout my entire stay, but already by the third day, I was sleeping through the morning call like a local.

Sublime Porte

View Larger Map

Just a short trip to Istanbul and an even shorter stop in London on the return flight. I'll post photos when I get back.

Fidelidad

Just let me say amid the shouts of self-congratulatory glee across DC and Miami today: the problem with Cuba has never been Fidel Castro. Cuba’s problem has never had anything to do with anything as embedded in Cuba as Comrade Fidel.

From its colonization under the repressive thumb of the Spanish Empire—may you and your conquistadores de terrorismo (todo en el nombre de Dios todopoderoso, por supuesto) rot in hell—Cuba and the inhabitants of Cuba have always gotten the short end of the stick, and the rotten end of hegemonic imperialism. And when Spain was finally banished, the US came riding in atop a brown horse named Little Texas, no less, to take charge, subjecting Cuba to de facto American rule for half a century.

Both corrupt American political parties have played along in the game of World Domination. From Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco (don’t worry, children: he got his just a few years later in Dallas) to Clinton’s signing of the Orwellian-named Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, Democrats have been just as thickheaded and insular as Republicans when it comes to dictating policy toward one of America’s closest neighbor-nations.

So on this glorious, sunny day in Havana, the “Cuban problem” still remains and will be around for quite some time, for as long as Americans keep electing imbeciles, for as long as crazy “refugees” in Miami keep dictating a bankrupt policy toward their homeland despite reasonable proposals over the past 50+ years, for as long as that pinche Dios todopoderoso sits on his shiny gold throne puffing away on his El Rey del Mundo cigar.

Until then: ¡Viva la Revolución!

Whither the Turks?

During the forty-six hours I spent in Budapest in the winter of ’96, I befriended another American at the hostel who was traveling the world researching the history of coffee for a book he was writing. We decided to visit the castle way up in the hills of Buda on our last (and my second) day there. After about an hour walking through the historical exhibitions we were struck that there had been no mention of the Turks or the Ottomans in any of the displays. Between the two of us, we pretty much covered all major Western language groups, so we decided to ask a docent whither the Turkish history of Hungary.

I think it would be significantly funnier if we had opened the floodgates of our polyglottery upon that poor, unsuspecting Hungarian girl who happened to be volunteering that sunny winter day twelve years ago. But instead I think we were much more restrained as we passed the linguistic torch back and forth between ourselves.

I asked first in English, to which she stared blankly before shaking her head. Then it was my companion’s turn; this time in German. They were after all one time deeply embedded within the Austro-Hungarian Empire! Nein on the German front. Aha! I thought: let me try out my Polish; the sheer number of Polish tourists and guest workers in Hungary surely made it a viable option. And that would be a nie. His turn now: French. Nope (said in a Cajun accent, no doubt). My high school Spanish? ¡No! One last-ditch effort: my Russian. Nyet such luck.

After the repeated failures of language—not on our part, mind you—we retired to the café for some of that Turkish devil liquid itself that passed through these lands so many generations ago for the first time, shortly after that poor Cossack soldier found a bag of coffee beans on a dying Ottoman fighter following some long forgotten Ukrainian battle.

I wonder if my compatriot/co-traveler ever finished his book on coffee. I wonder if the museum docent ever learned a useful language. I wonder if the Hungarians were ever able to tell their secret history that once converged with the Turks'. I wonder where I’d be now if I would’ve taken up the offer I had received the night before at the disco near the deserted army barracks by the train station. I especially wonder such things when I hear “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” on the radio, one of the many songs we sat around singing at the pub the night before, before heading to the club.

Just a few hours later I was on a frozen train to Krakow.