Day 3: The Sultanahmet Hustle

It’s around 8pm and I’m walking around the park between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, attempting to find someone who will take my picture. That’s one of the good and bad things about traveling solo. If you want to be in your own photos, you need to find someone to hold the camera. Of course, that’s also the good part, since it means I have the opportunity to meet someone new. Of course, most people who take my photo in front of whatever interesting backdrop I’ve picked out simply snap my photo, return my camera and then move along to do whatever it was they were doing before I interrupted them.

I walk past a skinny guy a little shorter than me. He says hello as we pass each other. I stop him and ask if he will take my photo. He takes a few pictures of me with the Hagia Sofia in the background. Then I face the opposite direction and he photographs me standing in front of the Blue Mosque. I introduce myself and tell him I’m from America. And no, he didn’t ask once about Barack Obama. He shakes my hand and tells me that his name is Rojan.

Rojan is a Kurd from the city of Mardin in Kurdistan. He tells me that he’s thirty, a student, and will be in Turkey for three more months on a work visa. His price for taking my picture is to have me speak English with him for a while. We move over to a park bench and we talk about Turkey and America. His English is so-so, but we are able to communicate.

It’s been an exhausting and somewhat wacky day.

For whatever reason, I didn’t sleep well last night, and was a little fuzzy when the hazan at the Blue Mosque blew reveille. But, just as I did the previous morning, I listen to the Call to Prayer and then roll back over for a few more hours of sleep. I wake up at 8:30, still tired from Monday’s jaunt up the Bosphorus. I take my laptop to breakfast and do some writing. Paul appears after a half hour or so. Doreen is downstairs in their room, but he says that she will be joining us as soon as she's finished getting dressed. He asks me about my plans for the day. I tell him I’m not sure, but I figure it will be a good day to tackle some museums and take it easy. He and Doreen are getting ready to head out for the Prince's Islands. It’s an hour and half ferry ride, but the islands are supposed to be very pretty. He tells me I’m welcome to come along. I tell him that their day trip sounds more like a couples thing, so I’ll take a pass.

Paul is busy planning for Wednesday. His latest game plan is to take a two and a half hour bus ride to Edirne, cross the border into Greece and then Bulgaria. That sounds like a good adventure, and I tell him I’m in… if he can work out the logistics so that it won’t be prohibitively expensive. So, I drink my coffee and do some writing, while Paul plans for Wednesday. He lets on that a few days ago, in an act of desperation, he ate at and Istanbul McDonalds. He said it was pretty nasty. He ordered a McTurko, two beef patties in a pita garnished with chili sauce.

Doreen arrives for breakfast, but she isn’t very hungry. She’s more interested in the company. She’s also pretty tired from Monday’s trip, but figures she can sleep on the ferry. After breakfast, they show me their room. My room is kind of like an elongated closet, though it is functional. Their room on the other hand, has a separate sitting area, in addition to a full size bed. And it’s only costing them an additional $15 per night. They even have a desk, while I’m sitting on my bed with my laptop, well…on my lap.

They leave for the Prince's Islands. I head back to my room, take a nap, and go back to the café to do some more writing. I’ve decided that my novel will end in Kilyos. It starts to get too bright for me to see my computer screen, so I go back indoors and write for another hour and a half. Finally, I turn off my computer and head out the door to wander around for a while, wondering if I’ll be spending the day doing anything worth writing about.

Time to visit the Hagia Sofia. I walk toward the mosque, but get turned around. Where did they put that thing? It was here a minute ago. I’m standing in an outdoor café looking at my map, while the café proprietor asks me which Hagia Sofia I’m looking for, the big one or the little one. Huh? There are two of them? Two women put down their apple tea and take pity on me. They are Joanne and Jessica from Dayton, Ohio. They’ve been to Istanbul many times, and assure me that the café owner has utterly misunderstood my question. They explain that there is, in fact, only one Hagia Sofia, as I suspected. It’s on the way back to their hotel, so they ask me to walk with me to make sure I don’t get lost…again. They are very intrigued by my trip to Kilyos. Neither of them has ever been there, and they’re awfully impressed that Paul was able to pull it off on his first trip to Turkey.

We reach the Hagia Sofia, and we part ways. I won’t go into the history of the church/mosque. I took care of that in my Day 1 journal entry. I pay 20 YTL for an admission ticket. A woman walks over to me and offers her services as a tour guide. I take a pass. My guidebook should be fine. I take out my camera and prepare to take a picture and…oops. Seems I left my memory card back in the room after I finished downloading photos. So, I use my camcorder to shoot a video and take some photos. Yes, it can do both. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a flash. Oh right, and I forgot to recharge the battery last night. There is some charge left in the battery, but not a lot. In the immortal words of the esteemed Homer Simpson, "D’oh!"

Justinian built the Hagia Sofia in the middle of the sixth century. It was Santa Sofia for nine hundred years until Mehmet The Conqueror turned it into a mosque in 1453, the year he took Constantinople. Nearly five hundred year later, in the 1930s, it became a museum. So, if you want prayer, you have to go across the street to the Blue Mosque. From an architectural standpoint the Hagia Sofia is a basilica. It has a central wide-open area, or nave, flanked by large pillars, with secondary aisles extending outward. An enormous dome covers the nave. I was expecting to see giant mosaics on the dome’s ceiling, but Justinian elected to go with geometric patterns. There are a few angels on the inner dome, but you have to squint pretty hard to see them. The lighting is pretty bad. I walk around the nave and attempt to shoot some photos. But without a flash, very few of them come out. So, I set out to create the world’s most boring video. Here we see the dome. Yessiree, that’s the dome. And if I move the camera over to this other dark area above the apse, we see more of…the dome. D’oh!

I run into a herd of nine-year-olds who are visiting the museum on a field trip. They are Turkish, friendly, and they keep asking me the same questions. What is your name? Where do you live? How are you? How old are you? Some will say something like, "My name is Ahmet." Then it occurs to me that these kids are learning English, and they're drilling me with the only questions they know. This is like when Alix started Spanish, and went out to dazzle my Mexican neighbors with "Como esta...Como esta." They're funny and friendly, and their teacher is attempting to round them all up.






I follow a winding stone tunnel to the upper gallery. There’s a mosaic of Jesus and Mary giving the city to Constantine. Another shows Constantine and the Empress Zoë, with Jesus in between them. The mosaics are beautiful, and like most things in the Hagia Sofia, they are in various states of disrepair. Some mosaics look perfectly restored, while others are fragmented, accompanied by pictures showing what they would look like if they were complete. Same thing with the dome. There’s a huge chunk of scaffolding that extends nearly all the way to the peak of the dome. The scaffolding has been there for decades. Turks love the Hagia Sofia as part of their heritage. But the mosque has been an incredible money pit for the Turkish government. I photograph a few more mosaics, and find a nice German girl to take a shot of me standing on the green circle that marks the location of Zoë’s (the empress, not my daughter who merely thinks she's an empress) throne. And now my battery is officially dead.

I look around some more, but I’ve seen pretty much everything. I leave the mosque and think about checking out the cisterns, but first I need to go back to the hotel to get my memory card. I find it, but realize that the cisterns close in an hour, so I’ll have to wait until Thursday to see them.

I leave the hotel at around 6pm, with no real idea of where I’m going. As I pass the Blue Mosque, a voice yells, "How are you doing?" I see two guys sitting on opposite sides of an outdoor booth in front of some small shops. The guy doing the yelling is Sonny. He asks where I’m from. I say, America. Where in America? I yell back, Chicago! Sonny yells back, I’m from Wisconsin!

He waves me over and asks me to join him and his friend, Hasan. Sonny is from a town on the Bosphorus, but he went to college in Madison and Lacrosse. He studied marketing and ESL. After eighteen years, he decided to move back to Turkey. He’s thirty-five, divorced with two kids back in Wisconsin, and now he just enjoys bombing around on his motorcycle. Hasan, who is probably around fifty, lives in Australia, and is back in Istanbul visiting friends. So, we chat about a bunch of stuff. They ask if I’d like to have some tea. From what I’ve heard, the invitation to tea is usually a prelude to business dealings. They’re going to try to sell me something, though I’m not sure what.

A very distinguished looking bearded man comes over to our table. He is around 70, and looks like a Turkish version of Max Von Sydow. Very professorial. He sits down and we chat. I introduce myself, and he tells me his name is Edip, a variation of Oedipus. Now, I’ve had a lot of people ask me, what Jewish mother names her kid Earl? Well, I’d like to know what mother anywhere names her son after Oedipus (I will dispense with Kentucky jokes). Edip asks me where my people are from. I tell him that they came from Belarus, Romania, Poland and Lithuania. He smiles, "Ah, you’re Ashkenazi (Eastern European Jewish)." I smile back and say, "Oh, you figured out I’m Jewish." He says, "Of course."

Edip and I spend the next hour talking about religion in the region. Sonny and Hasan say nothing. They just watch. We discuss Abraham and his two sons Isaac and Ishmael, how Isaac’s lineage extends to King David and Jesus, and how Ishmael’s lineage led to the birth of Muhammad. We discuss the expansion of Islam and Judaism in the region. He tells me that Abraham was from Urfa. I thought he was born in Ur. Edip explains that the current name is Urfa, and that they are known for their carpets.

Ding! Ding! Ding! That’s it! Edip is going to try to sell me a carpet.

We talk more, and then he excused himself. Sonny takes the baton and asks me if I’d like to see their carpets. I tell him that I’m sure they’re beautiful, but my budget doesn’t include a carpet. He says, "It’s all good. Just take a look at what we have." I tell him again, but he insists it’s all good. I follow him into the shop. He shows me several carpets and asks me what I think. They’re lovely, but I’m not buying. Perhaps I can recommend them to some friends.

At this point, those of you who have known me for a long time are probably laughing, as you no doubt recall that I’m the guy who gets his jollies chatting with car salesmen just for the fun of it. I can see this pitch coming a mile away. As I expect, Edip reenters the shop. Sonny has shown the merchandise, but Edip is the closer. We sit down, and Sonny brings us some apple tea and sugar cubes. The tea tastes a lot like cider. I like these guys and I love their style. I mean they really have this down to an art. But I really don’t want to jerk them around, so I’m very direct with them. I love chatting with you. To be honest, I have nothing better to do, but I won’t be buying any carpets today. Edip still wants me to see his goods. He takes out a beautiful carpet, explains the knotting and stitching, and tells me that it’s a $3000 carpet, but I can have it tonight for $600. To be honest, it is a really good deal. Unfortunately, my vacation budget does not include a $600 carpet. I remind him that I’ll be happy to tell my friends about this great deal.

Edip finally throws in the towel. We exchange email addresses, and he tells me that he will contact me if he does a carpet show in Chicago. We spend another half hour discussing Sufism (he is a Sufi Muslim). We discuss different approaches to the infinite nature of God, and he writes out a list of books he thinks I will enjoy. He also lists an article he wrote for National Geographic in 1991. I tell him I’ll check that out as soon as I get back.

As I leave the carpet shop, Edip asks me where I’m going next. I explain that it’s 8pm, and I still haven’t had dinner. So, guess who owns the restaurant next to the carpet shop? Okay, I won’t buy a carpet, but I am hungry.

I walk into Edip’s restaurant, The Grand Vezir. He gives me a menu and asks if I’d like some pomegranate juice. After last nights experience with the so-so pomegranates, I decline. He tells me that I should drink pomegranate juice and fresh apple juice for their antioxidant properties, and adds that if I don’t like the juice, I won’t have to pay for it. It’s a deal.

I watch as they put the pomegranates in the juicer and…voila!

Imagine the ripest, sweetest, tartest, pulpiest orange juice you’ve ever had in your life. Now, imagine that the oranges were pomegranates. Oh my god! This stuff is incredible. Beyond incredible. Oh, and the lamb is pretty good too.

The Grand Vezir is where the locals eat. The carpeting is industrial and stained. The booth’s tables and vinyl benches are very low, and quite Middle Eastern. A radio station is blaring really loud Turkish rock through the restaurant’s speakers. I can’t understand the lyrics, but the beat is pretty poppy. There are ten other diners, all men, and all over thirty. I am the only non-smoker, but the ceiling is high enough and there’s enough ventilation that it doesn’t bother me. When I arrived in Turkey, I accepted the fact that people here like to smoke, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

Two pretty young girls walk into the restaurant, and sit down at the booth across from me. They talk and laugh for a bit, and then get up and leave. I’m guessing they didn’t like the vibe or attention they were getting from the other patrons. Finally, I leave. Edip sees me outside and calls me over. I tell him the food was great, and that I loved the pomegranate juice. He tells me to drink lots of pomegranate juice whenever possible. Then he adds that if I come by the restaurant on Thursday night, he’ll bring me to a place where I can see some real whirling dervishes. Thursday is way too far ahead.

So, I wander into the park between the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, where I meet Rojan. We chat in English, since my Kurdish is a tad rusty. He tells me that he’s single, and the problem with Turkish women is that they won’t go near you if you don’t have money. He says that if you have money and a car, you will have ten women. All at once? I tell him that’s too bad. He says he’s a student and has no money, so women stay away from him. Oh well, what are you going to do?

He asks if I’m married. I tell him I’m divorced, but he doesn’t quite get my meaning. Finally I say, yes I’m single. He asks me if I like men. He says he likes men.

Oh crap, he’s trying to pick me up.

I tell him that I like women and only women. Not men? Nope, not men. Sorry dude.

He says he likes men and women. He asks if I like Turkish women. I say they’re very nice. He asks if I want to go with him to get some prostitutes. Huh? Where did that come from? He makes a gesture with his hips to make sure I get his point. No, I don’t want to get prostitutes. I just wanted a few pictures…of me…and a mosque. No prostitutes of any gender, real or implied. He says he likes Ukrainian and Hungarian women because they’re very strong. Rojan, any woman over 130 pounds will snap you like a twig. Rojan says he doesn’t care. And, as an “", by the way," he points out that gay men use this park for cruising. Well, that wasn’t in my travel book.

And then, he asks…do I like to smoke hashish. I’m in Turkey and he’s asking if I want hashish. I am really not liking the direction of this conversation. I tell him that I don’t smoke hashish. He asks about marijuana. Nope. I tell him that I’m feeling kind of cold, and that I had better get back to my hotel. We say goodbye, but he gives it one last shot. He can arrange for hookers for both of us. Only 50 YTL for ten minutes. Okay, the absurdity of the situation has now been compounded by the idea that Turkish prostitutes charge their johns in ten-minute intervals, like a parking meter. Goodbye Rojan.

Well, this has been quite the interesting day. And I was never more than ten minutes from my hotel. When I get back to the Erguvan, I run into Paul. He and Doreen have just made it back from the Princess Islands. How were they? Paul says they were pretty dilapidated. A lot of people left the ferry, surveyed the island, and then got right back in line to catch the next one back to the mainland. I told him about my evening.

Paul said that he was out walking a few nights ago, when a guy approached him with offers of women for 50 YTL…no wait, 30 YTL…for you, special offer of 10 YTL. I looked at him. Did you say 10 YTL? That’s $6.50. Yecch. And Paul said that the guy threatened to tell Doreen if he didn’t pay. Paul said, What are you going to tell her? That I didn’t buy a hooker?

Enough for me. Off to bed. Me. Just me.

Catch you all tomorrow.