Lost in Istanbul

LOST IN ISTANBUL

Well, not really lost.  Deliberately disoriented? Momentarily mislaid?

Getting lost in this teeming, exotic metropolis sounds frightening. So why do my husband and I deliberately do it on every visit? Because it lets us fall into the life of the little back streets, the crowded marketplaces, the unbelievable traffic jams.

It’s easy to begin. First you go into the gigantic Covered Bazaar and wander, fending off the importuning leather jacket and rug salesmen. That gets you started at being lost—five minutes in those intricate interior streets and you’ll only by accident find the door where you entered. That’s good, because that’s not the way you want to leave. After you’re sure you’re not where you started, find an exit. A flicker of natural light coming down a stairway, a stray sunbeam from around a corner will give you the clue. Out you go.

You’ll find yourself, if you picked a good exit, on a tiny street crammed with shops, all of them devoted to a single product. One of them is the blue jean street. Jeans hang from the awnings, pile up in the windows, wave from racks on what passes for a sidewalk. Keep walking, and you’ll find another street that might feature shirts, or dresses. Only here there are even more; other merchants have spread their wares on large cardboard sheets in the middle of the street, filling it corner to corner.

You pick your way among the piles, dodging the throngs of shoppers crowding what is left of the space. Mustachioed men in shirtsleeves, plain women in headscarves and the ubiquitous gray raincoats worn even in the hottest weather—the Istanbul substitute for robes and veil.

A car appears around the corner, facing a solid block of people and merchandise. But miraculously, the people crowd against the store fronts and the peddlers pull their sheets of cardboard piled with clothes to one side. The car maneuvers carefully by, and the market is restored to the pavement.

Round a corner. The next street might be pots and pans, or copper ware, or shoes. Once we found a street where every shop window was filled with rolls of tape bearing labels: Izod, Polo, Guess!, DKNY, Yves St. Laurent. We’ve never been able to locate it since, but it was there.

And always people—incredible numbers of people. There must be: someone has to buy all of this stuff. In this part of Istanbul every available inch is devoted to selling. Merchants lay out their wares on the sidewalks of the bridges, on the steps of the underpasses that let pedestrians cross the life-threatening main streets, in shanties on vacant lots.

Here on these tiny streets the exchange is constant and noisy as women bargain for a good deal on a blouse and men argue cheerfully about a tool. Young boys thread their way through the mob carrying trays of hot tea in bulbous little glasses, disappearing into the shops to provide the proprietors with refreshment. A peddler on the corner sells slices of watermelon; he is surrounded by men who somehow manage to eat it without dripping down their white shirt fronts.

You’re headed downhill now. That’s good, because you know that you’ll eventually emerge at the Golden Horn, somewhere near the Spice Bazaar, and it’s nearly lunchtime. The streets widen a foot or so, and traffic thickens. At an intersection you stop to look at a clog of cars and trucks that surely will never be disentangled. Solid lines of traffic are trying to merge from five different directions into an already jammed street. These people will be here still tomorrow morning—maybe forever. Then suddenly it flows, and everyone can move again. Heaven knows where it all went—every street seems to be solidly packed all the time.

Finally you are at the bottom, with the New Mosque and the Spice Bazaar in view. Walk through the Bazaar, inhaling deeply, and into the courtyard beyond. Here you can have a delicious lunch and ponder a bookkeeper’s nightmare.

A friendly waiter seats you under the trees and recommends the kebap. All right, you say, and two salads and two beers. Then you watch. He heads for the row of stalls against the building, each one a separate establishment. From one he gets beer, from another salad, from a third the kebap, returning too fast to have paid for them on the spot. Someone must be keeping records, but meanwhile six more parties have been seated and treated the same way. Do they pool all the cash and figure it out at the end of the day? Do they just divide it up, or actually know who really ordered what?  Who knows.

Enjoy your lunch.