Life is so fragile. The past couple of days have hit me hard.
Yesterday morning, I woke up to the news that an acquaintance from back home had died in an avalanche in Austria. RIP. It suddenly brought back memories of Wenchao, whom I met on the EBC trek in Nepal. He had summited Everest and Denali, only to die in a fall in Kenya a year later.
A few days ago, southeastern Turkey and northern Syria were struck by two major earthquakes, followed by dozens of aftershocks. The scale of the casualties is hard to imagine. I spent some time in Istanbul six years ago, and thankfully one of my favorite cities in the world was not hit too badly. Countless fragments of memory came flooding back.
During China’s National Day holiday in 2017, my former company happened to be holding its annual meeting in Jordan, so I flew to Istanbul, ready to finally unlock Turkey from my travel list. Back then, the giant new IST airport had not yet opened, so my flight landed at the older, smaller SAW on the Asian side. I took a bus into the city, a ride that felt both leisurely and bumpy.
The first time I saw the sunset over the Bosphorus from Karaköy Pier, I was so moved that I changed my itinerary on the spot. Pamukkale, hot-air balloons, all of it went out the window. I stayed in Istanbul for another 10 days or so, perfectly content.
Across the water, the skyline of the old city looked like a twilight score woven from the minarets of mosques large and small.
The next day, I went to see the Blue Mosque. Istanbul is split in two by the Bosphorus: Europe to the west, Asia to the east.
The old city carries the glory of the Ottoman Empire, and the Blue Mosque, built at the height of that era, is its brightest jewel.
I still don’t understand why a white mosque is called the Blue Mosque, but there’s no question that blue is the color that makes this city so intoxicating.
I sat by the fountain in the mosque square petting cats. There must be well over 100,000 cats roaming freely across Istanbul; it is, without question, a city of cats. Watching people come and go in front of a mosque that has stood for 500 years, I found myself reflecting on how short life is. Then, by chance, I spotted an upperclasswoman from college. As it turned out, she was the beautiful woman on my flight the day before who had caught everyone’s eye. The world is small.
And of course there was Hagia Sophia. If the Blue Mosque represents glory built from 0 to 1, then Hagia Sophia is the dramatic collision of two great histories.
On the evening of May 28, 1453, after months under Ottoman siege, the people of the city finally set aside all distinctions of rank and class and entered Hagia Sophia together to pray. None of them could have known it would also be the last such prayer in the thousand-plus-year history of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The next day, because of an oversight involving an inconspicuous little gate, the Ottomans poured in like a flood. From that moment on, the city would never again be Constantinople.
When the walls of New Rome fell, Constantinople became Istanbul. The Roman Empire died, but its civilization went on to illuminate the world. The spark of the Renaissance spread across Europe in the footsteps of Greeks fleeing into exile.
Every day I would go to a restaurant near the square called Arcadiablue, just for the view of those two old companions. Hagia Sophia, 1,500 years old, and the Blue Mosque, 500 years old: it felt as though the fissures between civilizations had never truly healed.
Galata Bridge connects the old city and Beyoğlu, separated by the Golden Horn. The bridge deck is broad, almost stout. The sidewalks on both sides were packed with anglers, and the sight of dozens of fishing rods lined up together was spectacular. No one seemed to leave empty-handed; in the buckets beside them, fish flopped here and there.
And the fish were easy to deal with afterward: below the bridge was an entire row of restaurants and stalls selling fish sandwiches, the Bosphorus’s own “McDonald’s on the water.” Half a loaf of Turkish bread, Ekmek, stuffed with grilled fish, onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers. The portions were huge; one serving could keep you full for a day.
Every time I passed Galata Bridge, I’d buy a fish sandwich—and stay on my toes. This is one of the best-known hubs for the famous “Turkey scams,” especially the classic shoeshine scam.
Just how famous are these Turkey scams? National Geographic even made a documentary, Scam City, and one episode was devoted entirely to Istanbul.
My favorite thing to do in Istanbul was simply to hop on ferries and spend the day ferry-hopping between different piers.
The blue of the Bosphorus is a view you never tire of. On a boat heading toward the Black Sea, I suddenly thought of my grandfather. He was a geography teacher who spent his whole life teaching about the Bosphorus Strait and the Mediterranean climate, yet never had the chance to stand by these waters himself.
How lucky we are.
He passed away that winter. Since then, I’ve felt that in some small way I am seeing the world for him too. My days in Istanbul happened to coincide with the Mid-Autumn Festival, and being abroad only deepened that longing for family.
Later I moved to a hotel near Beşiktaş—a name familiar to soccer fans—with a fantastic view. One window looked out over Barbaros Boulevard, where traffic flowed day and night, and beyond it the mouth of the Bosphorus, where waves from the Black Sea enter the Sea of Marmara, then surge onward through the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean.
The other window looked out toward the First Bosphorus Bridge. On one side was Europe; on the other, Asia. Before you knew it, you were crossing back and forth between two continents.
Istanbul at dusk is always this enchanting.
The Golden Horn is another wonderful place to take in the city and the sea. Buried beneath its waters, according to Istanbul urban legend, is gold hastily thrown in when the Byzantine Empire fell.
The lush green park and the café named after Pierre Loti recall the refined life of the Ottoman era. It’s one of Istanbul’s nostalgic corners.
Part of why I came to Istanbul was also one person and several books. Orhan Pamuk was born, raised, and has lived in Istanbul, and he has spent a lifetime writing stories about the city he loves. I couldn’t quite make my way through My Name Is Red, but in Istanbul: Memories and the City I got lost in the “hüzün” that Pamuk describes over pages and pages.
For the rest of my time there, I wandered the streets of Istanbul chasing Pamuk’s shadow and the hüzün in his writing.
Hidden in a small alley in Beyoğlu’s affluent district is an unassuming three-story building, a pilgrimage site for every Pamuk fan. In The Museum of Innocence, every display case contains bits and pieces of everyday life from another era—the very objects that appear chapter by chapter in the novel of the same name. Walking through the museum felt like rereading the book. It was a wonderful sensation.
Pamuk himself has said he prefers small but beautiful museums: “Their scale is refined and intimate; they tell the everyday stories of ordinary individuals and preserve distinctive local cultural memory.”
At the end of the novel, the protagonist Kemal says this:
“Mr. Pamuk, please don’t forget that what I want to say at the end of this book is...”
“Let everyone know that I lived a very happy life.”
May everyone be able to live a life that feels happy to them, even if it is interrupted too suddenly by accident or fate.
And to every person I met in Turkey—the young woman on the ferry, the waiter at Arcadiablue, the newlyweds whose wedding I accidentally wandered into, the kids who kicked a soccer ball with me in an alley, the street vendor selling stuffed mussels with rice, the old man in an antique shop who sold me weathered pages from an old painting album—I hope you are all doing well.