Istanbul - 3: The Midnight Serenader

                      Our hotel formed the corner of one of the many streets branching off Istiklal Caddesi. Its front door overlooked the main Galatasaray  thoroughfare Rafik Saydam Caddesi, some 300 feet away. You could refresh yourself with a little walk along the river, but if you really wanted stunning views, then you could take the elevator to the little restaurant (under construction) on the top floor and sigh over the bit of the Bosphorus called ‘The Golden Horn’. 

Asia, from Europe

                       The narrow streets running between the four-storey pretty pastel Venetian-style buildings were anything but a hindrance. They were criss-crossed by smaller lanes and I’m sure if I’d stayed there a while longer, I would have figured out the best shortcuts…which no doubt may have been the purpose for such a grid, developed over centuries.

                      These lanes were not more than 10 feet wide and cobbled, so that one’s shoes made that deliciously romantic ‘click’ as one huffed and puffed up to Istiklal. Of course, not the best streets to push a child’s pram along, but just imagine how it might have been a century or two earlier, with only foot traffic and the occasional horse-drawn carriage, with gleaming feathered horses, and the well-dressed visitor.

The 'Cafe de (ahem) Paree'

                       Beyoglu has existed since the Rennaissance…Bey meaning ‘son of’ and Oglu, ‘Lord’ (therefore, ‘son of a Lord’ in Turkish) – a reference to Lodovico Gritti, the son of Andrea Gritti, the Venetian Bailo (ambassador) and later Doge of Venice in 1523. I’m not sure if the building we stayed in was more than a hundred years old, having been named after Guiseppe Donizetti, Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music (from 1808-1839). If this were true, it certainly was very well preserved. Of course, not sound proof at all. All through the week I spent at the hotel, I heard each and every noise from the street one level below, well into the odd hours of the night. It was an authentic Istanbul ‘immersion’ of sorts.



Oops!

                     My room’s large windows could be opened by merely flipping up their sole security – a brass latch. It was very tempting to swing these glass-paned wood-framed panels open at least once a day to amuse myself with all that was going on down there. I once spotted some classmates coming back with kebab rolls wrapped in paper, water bottles in hand. There were always suppliers delivering fresh fruit and vegetables to the grocers, party-goers with their arms over one another, musicians and artists hauling their instruments up the slope, and of course, motorbikes, cars, little vans, pushcarts…

                      The most memorable of all this traffic, and whose voice distinguished itself amidst all the cries and yells from the street below, was an old man. A sad sack, dressed in a dusty black pant suit, ratty black shoes, a white cotton shirt, and believe it or not, a black felt bowler hat. With his thatch of salt and pepper, and his bulbous nose, hand outstretched, he sang a sad tune with pure lung power. From 9pm till 4am. No kidding.

                      
                      There was one particularly raucous night when every group of young men who passed him yelled their heads off with some war cry in response to something he sang. It was complete hysteria. It sounded as though someone were being murdered, or tortured, or bitten by a mad dog, or given our medieval surroundings, put on the rack…And through all the mindless screaming, this old man sang away.

                      He serenaded J, J, M, M, Y, E, and me. I know they all had rooms on the first floor, like me, because our classroom was across the hall and we chatted about it during breakfast…”Which floor are you on?”…”Is your room sound-proof?”…”You know, I couldn’t sleep a wink last night…!”…YAWN. And so we happily dug into our delicious breakfast of cheeses, breads, pastries, fruit, eggs, cold cuts, salads, coffee, tea, juices…until the carbs made us sleepy again by 9:30 a.m., and we downed flasks of spiced Turkish coffee and munched phenomenal Turkish cookies through the day…or, in some cases (mine, I'll admit), succumbed to our cravings and fetched Starbucks lattes and blacks from Istiklal up the hill.

                       Of course, our other classmates on the higher floors had heard him as well. The guy was a powerhouse, belying his skinny frame. He sang with a passion that matched the torch songs of Edith Piaf, the spirituals of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, or the songs one hears very often in the busy streets of India, sung by street performers with fervor and a fever, almost. Songs in praise of God, love, one’s homeland…songs that moved the listener simply by virtue of the artist's depth of feeling.

The Performer



A country for men

                     As Bayram Kurban (Eid-al-Adha) neared, so the old man’s performance lengthened. I had already slept away one morning of classes due to jet lag and the noise at night, so I was very close to throwing open my windows and deliriously yelling, “SHUT UP!!!” But the Turks had been so friendly and polite…besides, there was a clause for ‘acceptable behavior’ in my graduate school course agreement that I couldn’t very well disregard. Most of all though, I caught myself feeling sorry for the old man. I wanted to go down and hand him some cash, but it was 2 a.m. and I didn’t want to invite unwanted attention. So I stood there, my head poking out of the window, the warm air flooding my room, and watched the old guy waving his hands and shooing off hecklers...while, I'm guessing, my classmates tried to drown his baritone with their pillows. We really had no choice but to endure this captivity, like the Wedding Guest collared by the ancient Mariner.

                      He certainly didn’t look mentally stable to me, and the lack of nutrition had rendered him gaunt and feeble, at first glance…except for his voice. To witness his unbroken spirit that poured itself into his full-throated numbers was reassuring, in a way. We often hear, “One can’t live on love and air alone”. But this old man was actively trying to beat the odds…of not having a steady job perhaps, of an untreated mental disease…of being homeless…who knew? He had gone beyond the here and now, and had transcended his own place to share his message with the world.

                      His voice commanded the scene before him for that brief week he stood in that street, wedged in by palazzos that blocked out the sun even on sunny days. His voice cut through the night, through hunger, pain and misery. His voice was an affirmation of survival and hope during Bayram Kurban, under Christmas lights hung between buildings in secular Istanbul. Of seeing beyond the superficial, beyond the smugness that comes of holding on to the material and the immediate. Maybe he was a jinn or the ghost of the Ancient Mariner who had taken human form to remind us that we are one, no matter how different our religions, races, and cultures -

"He prayeth best, who loveth best,

 All things both great and small;

 For the dear God who loveth us,

 He made and loveth all."

A fitting end to our European Regional Business Environment course in Turkey.

                      Needless to say, I spent the next week with my sons and husband in Atakoy, far away from the madding crowd of the party districts of European Istanbul – Galatasaray, Beyoglu, and Taksim.