Have you ever been to Louisiana?" asked a Turkishman with a five o'clockshadow, dressed in a powderblue suit at noon. We were walking near theEgyptianObelisk in Hippodrome Square in Istanbul. He'd been toLouisianatwice, he said, on business. My instantly intimatenew friend went on toexplain why I shouldn't slip off myshoes and enter the Blue Mosque. "Itis prayer time," he said. "Only Muslims allowed." (Actually, I am toldlater, non-Muslims may enter, as long a they are respectful.) As consolation,he led me to his nearby rug shop, where I was soon holding a glass of hottea, surrounded by every stripeof flying carpet imaginable and feelingbemused.Istanbul is enjoying a rebirth: New pleasures and ancient treasures are establishing the city asthe Paris of the East. Brad Gooch visits the thriving Turkish metropolis.
Of course, I'd allowed myself to be led. The night be fore I left NewYork a friend advised, "Talk. Go along for the ride. You can always begoff by saying you have an appointment." Following her own advice, she'donce wound up at one of the finest rug stores of them all, the Maison deTapis d' Orient, along the Arasta Bazaar.
Istanbul's allure is in its layering of cultures, from Greco-Roman Constantinoplecapital of the Byzantine Empire and the largest city in the world in thesixth century through the garish excesses of the 600-year reign of theOttoman sultans, to the modern day Istanbul of the Turkish Republic. Yetunlike its precocious sister, Venice, now a self' referential reliquary,Istanbul is alive and functioning. In fact, it's trending up. Helped bymarkets newly opened to Western trade, as well as by the friendlier faceof Turkey's first female prime minister, Tansu Ciller, Istanbul is a cityon an increasing number of itineraries. More livable than Beirut or Cairo,and closer to the Middle East than Athens, the city is fast gaining a reputationas the Paris of the East.
"Istanbul's changing so fast that every time I go back it's different,"a young woman from San Francisco informed me. "I remember when I visitedin 1989 I came across my first woman with a shaved head. She said, 'I couldn'thave done this five months ago.' By the next year everyone was wearingDoc Martens."
Much of Istanbul's character is determined by its precarious teeteringon a fault line between European and Arabic culture. One area code liesin Europe, the other in Asia equally significant is its location at theconfluence of three bodies of water the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, andthe Black Sea. A jammed fractal landscape of 11 million citizens (up from900,000 in the early '60s, and in creasing by 200.000 a year as disgruntledfarmers and villagers continue to move in from the country side), the citystill manages to feel in many spots like a seaside resort.
The simplest approach to this megalopolis is through the old city, knownas the Sultanahmet, or Stamboul to 19th-century travelers. Occupying thearea of fourth-century Constantinople. its original boundaries are stilltraceable by a walk along a perimeter of walls. Here lie the familiar goldtinted postcard sights: the dome of Hagia Sophia; the four minarets ofSuleymaniye; the cypress filled grounds of Topkapi Palace; the cobblestonedplaza in front of the Spice Bazaar. where men in woven pillbox hats selloranges spread on colorful rugs.
The best way to fathom the Sultanahmet is to be lost a bit of vertigoinevitable anyway when cast among a warren of streets with no discernible,plan, the way up so often proving to have been the way down. Steep stonestairways lead to shadowy tunnels. A plaza in front of Istanbul Universitysomehow becomes an entrance to the Grand Bazaar, an elaborate covered maze--medieval shopping mall, actually crowding together 65 streets and thousandsof shops selling gold chains, intricate rugs, leather bomber jackets, silverware.A small, unprepossessing cottage actually turns out to be a rabbit holeto the marvelous Basilica Cistern. Justinian's sixth-century undergroundreservoir whose colonnade of Byzantine pillars are arranged in vanishingperspectives. (It was, by the way, erroneously situated beneath the Russianconsulate in From Russia with Love, in which James Bond seductively murmured,"The moonlight on the Bosporus is irresistible.")
One of the first of many Westerners to be seduced by Istanbul's bathswas Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: her 18th-century descriptions of the hammam,as Turkish baths are called. and her admiration for Turkish women's bodies,were the inspiration for Ingres' swooning Turkish Bath. It's still possibleto be massaged and doused with hot and cold water in one such bath house.The Cagaloglu Hamami, in continuous operation since 1741, is well touristedbut worth penetrating to discover domed marble chapels of steam. (An etchingat the entrance records 18th-century ladies on fierce platform shoes atleast a foot high, meant to protect them from puddles.)
Yet across the Galata Bridge, on the opposite shore of the Golden Horn,beckons one of the livelier. hipper, more contemporary quarters of Istanbul,Beyoglu. Here Istanbul succeeds at being both dreamy and mercantile, Easternand Western. A cross between Prague and Paris, with palatial foreign consulates(flourishing as embassies Until the capital moved to Ankara in 1923). broadboulevards. and Art Deco details, Beyoglu was the fashionable Europeanneighborhood called Pera during the 19th and early 20th centuries. hometo many Italians, Russians, Swiss. French, Greeks, Armenians, and SpanishJews.
Its premier landmark remains the Pera Palace Hotel, a deeply fancy affairbuilt in 1892 by the Compagnie des Wagons-lits to house passengers of theOrient Express. Agatha Christie wrote chunks of her Murder on the OrientExpress in room 411. Ataturk, the charismatic founder of the Turkish Republic,occupied room 101, now a museum. (His dandified portrait. looking likethat of Citizen Kane, hangs in countless hotels, taverns. and restaurants,)The grand hotel's glass cases of bric-a-brac and flourishes of armoiresmight seem cloying, depending on taste; but a raki, a cloudy Turkish ouzo.is certainly called for in its Orient Bar, which was once frequented byMata Hari and later by Greta Garbo, who played her on film.
Beyoglu recently passed through a seedy phase, still evident aroundTaksim Square, a Times Square expanse with plenty of blinking neon litclubs to which dubious touts try to drag any available elbow. Mostly, though,the mood in the quarter is one of bohemian free-spiritedness a qualitythat extends down a steep hill to Cihangir, a notorious transvestite hangoutat night, and over to the Golden Horn to the Fezhane, a museum of modernart housed in an old fez factory. Hopeful noises have been heard aboutturning abandoned factories into SoHo like lofts for artists. but littleprogress has been made so far.
A special treat of Taksim Square is its dolmus stop dolmus, meaning"full" in Turkish, refers to the fleets of seriously cool American carsfrom the '50s and '60s now pressed into service as communal taxis, takingoff to central destinations when full. A dolmus stand affords a view of54 Chevys, DeSotos,and Plymouth station wagons, all painted the same orange-yellow.One afternoon a taxi driver proudly informed me that a 1964 Cadillac rollingby "belonged to our prime minister 30 years ago."
The luckiest, and chicest, of the Istanbullu tend to live along theBosporus, especially on the Asian side. (As the first bridge wasn't builtacross the Bosporus until 1973, many older inhabitants of the city havenever even visited. Yet the Asian side is actually quite accessible byferry.) Many cafes, fish restaurants, and hotels line the Bosporus, comingalive in May, when things grow buzzier, steamier, and a bit decadent. HidivKasri, the fin de si*cle hilltop residence of an Egyptian khedive, hasbeen turned into a hotel. So has the 19th century Ciragan Palace, whereboth the prime minister and Turkish-born designer Rifat Ozbek were stayingwhen I was in town Urcan, a rambling, kitschy seaside restaurant in Sariyerdecorated with lit conch shells and hanging fishnets, serves its signaturelevrek, a sea bass chipped from a crust of rock salt by waiters with chisels.At Cafe Miyot, young Turks dressed in Ralph Lauren or Moschino order cappuccinoswhile listening to tapes of Tony Bennett or Billie Holiday. The disco 2019.hidden during the winter months in a club off Taksim Square. moves up theriver in summer to an abandoned auto graveyard that hums until 7:00 inthe morning. All in all. a La Dolce Vita party of the sort. wildly pursuedin Rome in the early 1960 has rediscovered itself in the past few summersin Istanbul.
When Flaubert visited the city in 1850, he wrote to a friend, "AboutConstantinople, where I arrived yesterday morning, I'll tell you nothingtoday, except to say that I've been struck by Fourier's idea that sometime in the future it will be the capital of the world. It is really fantasticas a human anthill." If the end of our century proves to be more livelythan apocalyptic. Fourier's farfetched prophecy could come true.
May 1995