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Travel Book |
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| Xanthoulis Yiannis |
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Category :
GREEK FICTION: Τhe writer and the city |
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ISBN :
9789604554782
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PAGES :
272
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FIRST PUBLISHED :
Nov 08
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Time in Constantinople expands, it loses its gravity, the clouds and the sky are hooked on the points of the minarets, dripping the special moisture of history. It doesn't matter how well informed you are. The moisture will penetrate you with the technique of dream, whether you like it or not.
The City entered dynamically the category of the city-metropolis in 1996. No resemblance to that city I first got to know in the asphyxiating August of 1972. Naturally, the modern architectural achievements co-existed with the 'gecekondu', the houses of the swarms of plebeians, made of tin cans and materials of every nature, put up in a single evening, which abounded in the rubbish-dumps. Poverty was as visible as wealth, the tumble-down wooden dwellings, the so-called 'ahşap', little by little, or in a great rush, succumbed to the remediating bulldozer which served the vision of a modern megalopolis-monstropolis, squares and parks were formed from nowhere, everywhere telephone-boxes were sown, labourers worked ceaselessly, wearing the insignia of the Municipality of Istanbul - the elected and successful Mayor was Erdoğan, the working-class boy from the down-market Kasimpasa district presided over these innovations, little gardens full of marigolds (kadife - meaning 'velvet' in Turkish) sprang up where a few years before polluted waters flowed and black walnut tree nettles rose up.
And life, sometimes to the sound of classic amanedes, sometimes with odd Oriental pop songs sung by hordes of singers, rolled on, full of questions and paradoxical purple-patches about rebirth. All beneath the fixed gaze of Kemal, whom progressively the new order circumvented without any qualms of conscience. All very well, but ... I walked kilometres upon kilometres on that journey of my conscious return. A journey which was to be repeated many times for different reasons in the years which followed.
I entered upon a process of getting to know the Kasim Pasha district, which our own Romii have always considered unbearably inferior. It was of interest chiefly for its infinite number of shops selling artificial flowers. A pseudo flower festival of supreme kitsch with imitation of every kind. Works of art of doomed aesthetic, jungles of fabric gladioli and lilies, sprigs of acacia and amaryllises, acres of organza tulips and hydrangeas of a silken loquaciousness; death itself with broad-leaved brocade and evolved plastic materials with the texture of a woman's thigh.
All this is right next to Halits, on the Horn, next to Hasköy, once the Jewish quarter, where today the tourist guides point out the Museum, with industrial miniatures of Rahmi Kots in an old shipyard, which, when I first went there, I took for a Byzantine monastery. You will find whatever is most phantasmagorically eccentric in this ancient district of the Horn, which was colonised under Beyazit II, son of the Conqueror of the City, by the persecuted Sephardic Jews, as was Balat opposite.
Hasköy today has been conquered by refugees from Anatolia, a flood of veiled women in black chadors and a swarm of children behind them with lollipops or daubed with Algita ice-cream.
This particular firm, which in all probability suggests a promise of Italy, Europe, and generally TV culture, has acquired, from what I can see, many followers over the years. To begin with I wondered why they prefer the ready-made stuff, when there is no shortage of ice-cream vendors with kaïmaki ice-creams with mastic, made from sheep or buffalo milk. And then I remembered what it was like with us, when we queued to taste the post-War achievements of the EVGA firm, while in the city where I grew up there were plenty of people from Istanbul who made superb ice-creams.
But, return to Kasköy, which was once almost completely Jewish, whereas now only some graves and a few remains of the old Sephardic families remain. But try finding them! You're not greatly helped by the steep climbs, the slopes (bayir) with the dodgy streets.
But at Balat, which was so named because it was next to the ruined Palace of Constantine Porphyogennetus - and so 'palat' or 'balat', what's it matter? - things are more straightforward. Here you'll find some of the oldest synagogues in the City still functioning, though the oldest is in Beyoğlu, and suffered serious damage as a result of the Al Qaida attack. Balat, cheek by jowl with the Fener - the Phanar - for which we still mourn, has started to look up somewhat since various Istanbul painters, writers, or simply would-be artists have chosen it for permanent residence.
It's a pitiable poor neighbourhood, but it has the fascinating sub-stratum of history. Well and truly drenched with the tears of the Jews who were mercilessly expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century by Ferdinand and Isabella, it retains the feel of a neighbourhood with coherence. Even if it has been taken over by the recent refugees from Anatolia and who knows what other corner of Turkey. Personally, I like it because for a time I used to visit, as is my custom, the two or three lowly hamams. Tourist attractions they are not. Happily. You won't see a tourist in Balat. A rare species.
And later I came to love, when I embarked upon learning Turkish, to sit in the cheap cookshops to eat baked green beans and aubergines with meat in tomato sauce. A lively neighbourhood, as all poor quarters, anyway, are, the barbers' shops packed - and I'll be damned if I can imagine what they're cutting and what they're shaving until midnight; full of coffee-shops with unnaturally large groups of men playing cards or gazing at the light programmes on television with the blond beauties, a model of unnaturalness for these poor things, who look at them stroking their crotch. As a friend of ours said, these men with their feverish eyes and blue lips are accustomed, on returning to the wretchedness of the family home - married as they are for 20 years, and with a flock of children - to clout their wives before lying down with them for a blind undertaking of tenderness.
And as dawn breaks, clouds of smells of fresh-baked bread cover over the atrocities of the night. Everywhere in Turkey, the bread is delicious. And, in smaller quantities, the bread cakes of Ramadan. In the old days, they used to bake them only for the period of Ramadan, as we do with the lagana bread for the first day of Lent. Now they make them all the year round. Those who can pay a bit extra get to taste them. The rest are limited to the cheap daily bread. And always from the radios the mournful songs of love, and the more modern ones with androgyne youths, who shock the connoisseurs. The eternal soundtrack of the crowd.
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