Pieces of Istanbul

It seems perverse to start talking about Istanbul right at the very end, but here goes: we had the loveliest taxi driver on the way back to the airport. All he wanted to do was talk. As the car drifted through the snarled-up streets, eventually the tall buildings fell away, the spaces around the roads got wider and wider and we could see what daylight there was. On our right were some new apartment blocks which could have been Reading, could have been London, could have been anywhere; the sort of characterless imitation of glamour you get when you throw lots of money and not much imagination at a green field.

“One million dollars for a duplex!” our driver said incredulously, before telling us that his flat, in the centre of the city, cost considerably less than that. To our left, visible through the murk, was the Sea of Marmara and the vessels, container ship after container ship, patiently waiting to be filled with cargo and sent out into the Black Sea, off to somewhere exotic that I will never visit. Our driver told us at length about how this works and how they can be moored there for ages, waiting for their next job. I’ve never seen so many ships; it was odd that things so huge could seem so peaceful.

Naturally, we told him how much we had loved Istanbul. It was nice not to have to lie, because we would have said that anyway. It’s like the moment when a friend says “this is the record by my band” or “I wrote this poem” or “I’m cooking something new for dinner tonight, hope you like it” and you listen, read or eat - because you have to - but in the back of your mind you’re dreading the possibility that your friend will turn out to that combination of untalented and deluded that is now almost exclusively the province of the early stages of TV talent shows.

When we said that, he smiled like we had told him he had the prettiest baby in the world. “Next time you come, you should come in May. It is lovely in May. And history! So much history! Next time you come, you should travel around Turkey, not just stay in Istanbul.” He was then distracted by the traffic slowing as it went past an ugly smudge of roadworks, and launched into a tirade about the incompetence of local government. But even then, it sounded like somebody criticising a loveable rogue, with plenty of heat but no spite.

Naturally, we also told him that we had loved the Turks and found them incredibly friendly. This, too, was true. I’ve never stayed anywhere where the people were so unfailingly pleasant to strangers. If you looked lost, people came up to you in the street and offered to help. And you look lost a lot in the old town, in the maze of streets in Sultanahmet, near the Blue Mosque, because in many places they have dispensed with the luxury of signposts telling you which road you are on. On our first night as we were on a corner squinting at a map and scratching our heads, a man had come up and offered his help. Unused to this level of assistance we were chilly and English, and because I am a man I was especially resistant to the idea of getting directions from anybody. “It is your first visit! Welcome to Istanbul. I hope you have a very good time. And you,” he said, indicating me, “you look like Eric Clapton. Very handsome.”

I know he meant it as a compliment, but it took me the rest of my trip to realise that was all it was. He wasn’t trying to sell me anything, or ask for money, he was just being hospitable. For the first, but not for the last, time on my trip I found myself feeling terrible for all the Turkish tourists who might have the misfortune to expect anything even remotely comparable if they ever visited London. It also made me think seriously about shaving off my beard, but then I've never been a fan of Clapton.

When we told the taxi driver how kind everybody had been, he reacted as if this was really no surprise. “Yes, we, the Turks, are the friendliest nation. It is because we are all family. Family is very important in our country. And when we meet someone for the first time, we always ask this one question first: Where are you from? Location is very important. We always want to know where someone is from, that is the defining thing.”

I smiled. He was right, of course, but we had worked that out some time before.


When I told people I was going to Istanbul many of them said one thing. “I bet you’ll get tired of being woken up by the call to prayer.” I don’t think I had ever heard it, so I didn’t know what to expect, and when I eventually did it was nothing like I had expected. Walking up Divan Yolu, one of the main streets, on Christmas Day, we heard it from one minaret and then another, and it wasn’t clear to me whether it was call and response or simply disjointed, strangely out of sync. The overall effect was like somebody having a confusing conversation with himself. Not only that: I thought it would sound celebratory, the way gospel music does, or an uplifting hymn, but instead to my ears it sounded plaintive and somehow sad. Sinister, too.

I could pretend it’s something to do with the nature of broadcasting in that way - to pretend that it’s forcing people to hear things they don’t want to hear, in the same way that mandatory courses and meetings are work are mandatory for a reason, because they are never fun. I could claim that it’s something to do with the image of loudhailers fixed to the side of towers, another thing my prejudices associate with totalitarianism, with mind control or captivity. I could even say that the architecture seemed splendid but threatening, the round domes like spaceships, the minarets pointing at the sky like weapons or missiles.

But pretending is pointless, because prejudices is what they were; unconscious ones perhaps, but prejudices none the less. I wonder if I would have said the same thing ten years ago, or whether it’s a feeling that has seeped into my Western secular consciousness because of everything that has happened since then. It was unpleasant to realise I was thinking that way and to have those judgments brought into the open like that, and to think about how many other people might unquestioningly feel something similar.

Over my time in the city I realised just how wrong those judgments were. To see whole crowds of people - not in a church, not in a mosque, but in public places - united in prayer was a moving and humbling experience. To walk around on the most religious day in the Christian calendar and see more day-to-day evidence of faith and belief in Istanbul, where the twenty-fifth of December is nothing special, than you ever would at home was quite something. And what did everyone back at home believe in instead? The twin values of watching the Doctor Who special and keeping hold of the receipts. And I say that like I’m better than them, when I know I’m not. I don’t even believe in that.

On our final day, we took off our shoes, put them in bags and carried them into the Blue Mosque. It was serene and stunning, and the ceiling glowed in the morning sunlight. I found myself struck, in the banal way of someone who’s never thought deeply about this kind of thing, by the contradictions inherent in religion; that it can build things so beautiful and do things so ugly. A throng of tourists from all over the world gazed up at the incredible dome above and we did what all tourists everywhere do when confronted with something gorgeous; the cameras came out and the flashes winked and we all shot away, trying to capture as much as we could about that huge space, built when none of these things were even imaginable. And I’m sure we all captured what it looked like with varying degrees of success, even if we could only understand a fraction of its significance.