THE CHARM OF ISTANBUL

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32903, 29 April 1972, Page 11

THE CHARM OF ISTANBUL

(By

W. BERTA KIVI)

“ICMEYINIZ — DO NOT DRINK.” The sign in my Otel bathroom was no mohammedan moralising—merely (in Turkish) a reminder to use instead the flash of guaranteed pure ice water. Who-knows-what can permeate old aquaducts in a city unchanged since Gallipoli days and earlier.

Unchanged? Well, perhaps not quite. Flared trousers and elegant “leather look” are “in” in the more modem section of Istanbul. And traffic horns are a cacophony for hours from 5 a.m., so that you almost identify the personality of each driver by the tune he blares at the poor fellow ahead of him on the narrow congested street. My room equalled a good New Zealand motel —mustard and gold carpet wall-to-wall, and a bathroom whose tiles were ceremoniously sluiced down ceiling to floor daily. Bathroom hardware was of a design ahead of ours. And all for $5 a day.

The room’s little balcony overlooked a courtyard that was a visitor’s delight. Being in the old part of town, the backs of apartments with shops below formed the other three sides of the court’s enclosure.

Merely to step on to the balcony was to become a part of the life of countless families. I looked in on their mattress-turning, dishwashing, laundry-pegging. Children minding the family baby taught him to wave to me in friendliness.

At twilight I watched two smartly dressed young men sitting at a tiny table on a tiny terrace, relaxing at some stick game while their dinner cooked, while others around, above and below them relaxed at different constricted recreations.

Dogs and cats claimed the ground of the courtyard; a cock proclaimed his tenancy from 3.30 am. and hens later let the residents know they had accepted his authority and taken his reminder about maintaining production figures. Getting lost My first experience in the city proper was to get lost in searching for the Tourist Information Office. I was looking at a city map in the doorway of a suburban bank as the young manager walked in. He asked if he might help me. Within minutes I was drinking tea, Turkish style, in elegant metal-held glasses, sitting comfortably in his office while a member of his staff made a reservation for me. (The bank manager’s name—you guessed it! —was Kemal.) So I found Otel Ebru. The face of the city is not totally unchanged. Earth works seem to have begun and then suffered a stop-work dispute or exhausted available finance. Tracks over and around subway excavation are worn smooth by long pedestrian use, but no-one explained what happened to the project, as we all exercised our hip muscles in negotiating stacked soil. To me, this was a welcome change from the unresisting pavements of many other cities. The way of life is still sufficiently different from ours to appeal to the traveller. I walked along the waterfront drive behind two boys leading two cream-coloured bears, but I seemed to be the only person who found it remarkable. A log became ship’s cargo, delivered to the deck by

horse and cart. Nearer town, light carts with boxed loads of machinery getting about at a smart trot indicated that the horse-trucking business is still thriving. At the Archaeological Museum, though, the lack of display skill adds to the effect. My first impression was that the Turks still do not know what to do with all the loot they plundered at the time they founded the city to name for Constantine. Grecian pillars lie beside the driveway as pipes lie where our drainiayers place them to await the mechanical digger. An outdoor collection of classical figures looks sadly like a graveyard, but perhaps this is appropriate placing of long-dead heroes. Byzantine art Even indoors, it takes time to accustom to the utilitarian display: but gradually for me came a great appreciation of this priceless collection of sculpture, mosaic, carving, all showing naturally the damage and therefore the history of its misadventures in the intervening centuries. Byzantium art is well represented and I liked the everyday artefacts — combs, mirrors, pomanders that take the imagination back in time more vividly than more formal pieces do. I had walked through Gulhane Park, where a group of school children was seeing the small zoo, on the opposite side of the walls that bordered the museum buildings, unable to find the entry the gatekeeper had insisted was open. Gardeners were making hilarity out of burning the dead wood of trees they had pruned. I could hear other workmen through the big iron gates that were closed _ against me, and when I finally attracted their hearing, one of them climbed up to a tower to signal over the great wall to me that I would have to go back through the park to the street to find the main gate to the museum area. Typical action This was a typical Turkish action. Perhaps because they live at the meeting place of east and west, or perhaps because Istanbul has been a port for so long, they are warmly helpful to strangers. In the streets, whenever I stopped to buy fruit there would be four or five people gathered around me, all competing for the privilege of trying out their English in interpreting for me. French is a useful language here, of course, ana I was often asked if I could communicate in Deutsch. In a restaurant a medical student from Ankara offered to translate for me so that I might order hot food to counter the chill of the cold wind that foretold rain. He brought the woman who served the food into the conversation, tossing English and Turkish between us to keep the three-person conversation going. He asked my view on hippies, and when I ventured the opinion that extremists on both sides keep the mass of us sanely on the centre of the road he translated this for the woman and she nodded her head in agreement. When I went to visit a mosque, two tourist buses arrived as I did. The Moslems seemed exceptionally tolerant of our trekking in en masse while they were at prayer, as has become customary with so many faiths now tourism has grown. I wondered what the Turks will eventually do with the old crumbling walls that spread over so much of Istanbul, reminders of the great defence needed to keep such a gateway port open. At home in New Zealand there would be conflict between historical societies and planners with bulldozers, with much resultant newspaper controversy. I would like to go again to Turkey, with a motor caravan, to use the motor camps and explore the shores of the Sea of Marmara and to mix again with the ordinary people going about their everyday work in much the same way as their ancestors have done for centuries.