Last Letter from Istanbul. Lucy Foley
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gleaming expansively. The minarets rise above in their etiolated elegance, cloud-piercing. It appears a city sleeping beneath a spell.
He romanticises it, of course, like all those who have come before him with their dreams of the Orient. In doing so, though he is yet to learn exactly how, he does a disservice. He consigns it to some semi-mythical, unpopulated realm. And in doing so he discounts its current inhabitants, modern and war-wrung, trying to continue with the business of living. The woman in the garden, for example … what thought has he of her?
But that first sight of it, in 1918. Standing on the deck of the Queen Elizabeth as it muscled its way along the Golden Horn, with the great gun turret rotating toward shore in case some member of the watching crowd had ‘any ideas’. All of them, even the rowdiest of his fellow soldiers, had been stunned before the wonder of it. It was suddenly inconceivable that they were arriving to occupy this great and beautiful place, more ancient than any of them could imagine. In that moment it had dwarfed them, taken possession of them. They were an inconsequential footnote in a tale begun millennia ago, in which armies far greater than they had come and conquered and been vanquished in their turn.
Now their numbers contribute to the chaos of the streets. To the black robes of Greek priests, the red fezzes of the Ottomans, the silk-veiled women, the brown jackets of the street sellers, the long mustard habits of the toll collectors on the bridge at Galata, are added Italian, British, American khaki, French blue. In the first few weeks they appeared parade-ready, these soldiers. And some of them had paraded, about the whole of the city – up the steep hill of Galata and Pera, across the bridge to Scutari. Impressive formations before the Byzantine splendour of the Aya Sofia, the eternal grace of the Blue Mosque. This was an attempt to display strength, dominion. Silent crowds of the vanquished had gathered to watch. But had there not, he wondered, been something slightly ludicrous in it?
He takes the tram to Galata, walks over the bridge to the part of the city they call Stamboul. Here the majority of the Muslim population lives. Here are all the choicest wonders of architecture, glories of the ancient world. There sits the jewel of Byzantium, the Aya Sofia, towering above the surrounding streets, rust-red in the morning light. Facing it, challenging its beauty: Sultanahmet, pride of the conquering Ottomans with its gorgeous array of gilt-tipped domes. A short distance away is the Topkapi palace: home to four centuries of sultans. It appears innocuous from this distance, veiled by tall, old trees … but at one time this was the nucleus of great love stories, of empire-threatening feuds, scandals that supplanted dynasties. And few places can be so shrouded in myth as the imperial harem, where once scores of women lived out their lives in blue-tiled rooms. If there is such a thing as the spirit of a city, it might reside there.
This is the realm of the French occupation, pale blue uniforms weave among the crowds. In British-held Pera the streets have a European feel: a blocky stone grandeur, wrought-iron, modern boulevards that might almost have been designed by Paris’ Haussmann. A municipal grandeur. This might be another city entirely. Here everything is built on a more delicate scale: houses of filigree wood, and the spires of mosques rising from the rooftops like lace-spindles. This is the city of which great men – and the occasional woman – have written, with which they have fallen in love. Here the streets seem to follow little logic, and look so alike that it can take several minutes before he realises that he is not quite where he thought he was. He has now a flimsy idea of the territory immediately beside the waterfront, based upon particular coffee shops and certain architectural features – green shutters, a building painted the unlikely pink of a sunset, a balcony of exquisitely detailed wrought-iron leaves.
He has discovered a barber here, in the shadow of the Blue Mosque, who will have one parade-smart for a song. He has a small assistant, eight years old, perhaps – or a malnourished ten – who brings coffee on a clattering tray. George usually tries to slip him a few piastres too.
He sits in the chair now, breathing the distinctive atmosphere of coffee, cologne, sweat. As he watches his jaw appears from beneath the shadow of bristles, starkly denuded, pale where the sun has not reached the skin. The moustache, too, with what seems like a single flick of the man’s wrist. It is something of a shock to see his old face appear; an unexpected reunion with a once-dear acquaintance. As he looks at this old version of himself he feels something within him list sideways. He takes a sip of the coffee, scalds his mouth, chews through the fine sediment of grounds, and feels himself restored to equilibrium.
He has learned to like the coffee here. It is served treacle-thick, heavily sweetened. At the bottom of the cup sits a sediment of fine grounds. The first couple of times he ordered it he chewed his way manfully through them, assuming this was an important, if unpleasant, part of the process. Eventually, the elderly man at the next table took pity upon him and explained, in a performance of gestures, that one stopped as soon as the tongue touched them.
Now he drinks several cups of the stuff a day, accompanied sometimes by one of the small sweetmeats: fine pastry dripping with honey that you have to eat quickly before it trickles down your sleeve.
Sometimes in the cafes he frequents he catches a glimpse of fellow khaki, or French blue. But this is rare – few other soldiers seem to be interested in trying the stuff. When it happens, though, he moves on to the next coffeehouse: a magnet repelled by its like. It is his private ritual, almost a secret one.
He feels … difficult to explain exactly, closest at this time to his real self. Not his wartime or professional self. Merely a man taking a simple pleasure.
Leaving the barber’s, he finds himself in the grand thoroughfare before the Aya Sofia, Baedeker in his hand. He found the book at a market stall, a strange relic of a time recent and yet so far off for everyone in this city, soldiers and civilians aside. He looks up in wonder at the gilded domes and then down at the page, only to see a rush of movement before him. He leaps back on instinct before he can properly understand what has just happened. Unseen until the last second, a little boy has run into his path and spat on the ground at his feet. He looks down, absolutely stunned, at the small gobbet of saliva where it seems to foam in the dust, and then at the boy. The child is tiny, with that pinched look that so many of the youth have here. He is caught as though frozen in the act of running away, almost equally surprised by his own act of defiance. For a moment they stare at one another, both wondering what George is going to do. And then a woman launches herself at the child, shielding him with her arms. ‘Please,’ she cries, looking up at George. ‘Please, forgive.’
There is much George would like to say to her. After the initial affront of the act, it suddenly seems rather amusing. The boy is so small, after all, his bravery quite astonishing. He would like to explain that no harm has been done, that if he had been in the boy’s position, he would hope he would have done the same. In this moment he feels all the frustration, the impotence, of the language barrier between them. ‘It’s all right,’ he says, putting up a hand. ‘It’s all right.’
Through the open windows come faint strains of music with a foreign flavour: Russian and American imports. It is a relief not to be out on the streets; for the time being this cramped apartment is a place of sanctuary.
One November evening, a couple of years ago, she and the boy had stayed late at the school: she planning the next day’s lessons, he reading at one of the desks. They were travelling home when a series of huge explosions rattled the windows of the tram. All of the passengers crouched low in their seats, bracing against the onslaught. Perhaps some, like she had, had been at Mahmut Paşa the day the English planes came … or had heard stories of it from others, stories steeped in gore.
Then someone had pointed to the sky and they saw it ablaze with coloured light; green, red, gold. It took her a while to recognise that these were fireworks, like those she had seen at Eid Mubarak a lifetime ago. It was some display by the Allies, no doubt – no one else in this city had anything to celebrate. The boy had asked if they could go and watch. Together they had climbed the cobbled streets of Pera to get a better look, past the doors of meyhanes and restaurants. The boy lingered outside these, caught by the faint sounds of revelry within – she tugged him on.