Later, we learned the bomb had exploded about the time our plane took off for Istanbul. When we landed, I turned my phone on to find it full of texts from concerned friends who knew our travel plans — making sure we were safe and sound.
We were, but we recognized that Istanbul was shaken.
The next morning, as we walked around the city, security was everywhere but somehow not intrusive. Our guide explained that tours were being canceled right and left. Whole cruise ships had left the port early or changed itineraries altogether to avoid Istanbul.
In this complicated world, the last thing anyone in Istanbul or elsewhere needed was another terrorist attack — and yet everywhere we went on the day after the attack (our first full day in the city), people were bending over backward to welcome us, to share their city, to help us find our way and enjoy the sights, sounds, incredible aromas and flavors of this amazing place where east meets west.
In any city of 15.6 million people, there is plenty to see and experience, but learning more about this place’s extraordinary history expanded my perspective and helped me manage a basic job of connecting dots I didn’t know were connectable previously (about the Greeks, the Romans, Christianity, Islam, the Crusades, the Silk Road, baklava and more).
For example, when we toured Topkapi Palace, the place where each sultan of the Ottoman Empire lived between 1470 and 1923 (as a point of reference, that’s about twice the length of time the U.S. has been a country), our guide pointed out Hagia Irene to the left as we entered the palace’s courtyards. I asked if we could go inside. He said we could but that there wasn’t much to see.
“The Crusaders took it all,” he said.
He wasn’t joking.
Whether it was just a matter of fact or an undertone of generational bitterness, I’m not sure. Either way, when we did go inside the structure, built as a Greek Orthodox church in 315 A.D. (and, for those playing along at home, that’s going on 2,000 years ago), he explained there was not much more that could be done to restore it because of the Crusaders’ actions about a thousand years ago. To be fair, Hagia Irene burned and was rebuilt with sturdier materials in 532 A.D. It remained a church until the Turks conquered the city in 1453 (again, that means it was a Christian church for more than a thousand years).
The wonders of Hagia Irene, Topkapi Palace, the Whirling Dervishes and a Turkish bath are extreme, but even those only scratch the surface of our experiences here. Taking everything in can make a girl’s head swirl — which is why the next day’s food tour added to the sensory overload as I attempted to wrangle the incredible twists and turns of Istanbul’s timeline.
The cuisine was even tastier than expected. For the Turks, fresh is the top priority — as in, our food guide took great pains to time our jaunt through the city (including both the European and Asian sides) to make sure we arrived at the best baklava place at the moment they were taking the day’s treats from the oven.
Video taken in Istanbul, Turkey on Nov 16 at the edge of the Bosphorus Strait.
Despite all of these wonders, my favorite moment thus far of our trip came after all the tours. My husband and I had just gotten off the ferry from Asia back to Europe. We stopped along the waterfront to admire the view. A fisherman was fishing. The mosque behind us was calling the faithful to prayer, and local families were, along with us, taking in the beauty of the ordinary. I decided to video the view.
To my delight, though nothing much happened, it was like all the good stuff was right there in front of us, and I happened to be videoing the scene which played out like an idyllic series of scripted moments of joy. Children were laughing. Mothers were loving. The fisherman was catching a fish. It was the opposite of all the grandeur or fear we had seen, or many had felt. Its purity made me shed a tear.
To quote Nick Cave, “The luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful.”
