random effluvia Istanbul

    A tram flashed by, ringing its bell whenever pedestrians hopped in front of it to cross the street. On the sidewalk were two ragged bunnies, perhaps mother and child, set atop a wooden crate. A laminated sign on A4 paper said: “Rabbit will tell your fortune.” Their owner eyed me as I passed by.

    The word ‘fly’ conjures images of soaring through the air with the sun and wind on my face and little fragments of damp cloud clinging to my hair, and a sense of complete freedom, power, and agency. Of course, the reality is the complete opposite. I pay hundreds of dollars to stand in queues and be felt up by surly, dead-eyed airport employees in between probing personal questions so I can be hurled into the air for 17 hours in a metal can packed with strangers, next to a long-elbowed old man with halitosis and severe respiratory problems. As consolation, there is a tiny window which I am commanded to keep open through which I can see a glimpse of what the world might look like if I really could fly. Now I remember why I wanted to take a 6-day train across Asia instead. It’s beginning to seem like all of my vacations will open with complaints about airports and airplanes. Here’s a tip: avoid layovers in China, because they will make you go through immigration, customs, and baggage claim, just to get back on the same flight. I must have gone through immigration 5 times in one trip.

    One of the first things that struck me out of the airport, and seemed to fit some preconception of mine, were the exaggerated movements, the unabashed, almost lazy self-assurance of Turkish men. As he gathered his passengers, our driver leaned on the railing with his hips thrust forward and belly pushed out over his belt, his watch gleaming on a hairy wrist, looking as if he had never nor could ever care about anything. His younger assistant spoke to him in short, popping phrases, gesturing with his fingers together as if holding a very important grain of sand. Whatever he was saying, the driver waved his knuckles in disdain: “I don’t care about your sand!” There is something different in the way they move here from my time in Korea that speaks of a confidence of corporeal form.
   
    Topkapi palace is sprawling. Even looking on a map, it engulfs a significant portion of the city. The rooms quickly become similar, but the grounds themselves are beautiful, and must have been so peaceful before tourism. Some of the trees outside the entrance are massive, and I wonder if they might be older than the palace itself, and what moments in history they have witnessed.
    Aside from its many other treasures, the palace museum contains some suspiciously incredible things, all in a single room. The sword of David. The staff of Moses. Several personal effects of Muhammad, which have survived the ravages of time for 13,000 years in surprisingly good condition.
    Walking through the Sultan’s old harem, I realized how much sense it made that only eunuchs were allowed to guard his concubines. There is a brutal and infantile efficiency to the problem-solving methods of tyrants that commands respect (at least from a distance). I find it fascinating, because as long as I live, I will never be able to understand those men through history who were content to dream and construct a morality to serve them. Much as I might find myself capable of analyzing the origins behind such thoughts, I can never replicate them in my own mind. Thus their otherness and consequent ability to transfix me; the flawless and frightening logic behind it:
    ‘Worried that my guards might consort with my women? --> Chop off their dicks in advance.’
Like a child’s math problem, it almost solves itself.

    Solicitors can be subtle here. It starts as a seeming interest in you, in where you come from, what you do, and ends in a proposition. They are not persistent, like in East Asia. The moment I say no, I have simply vanished as far as they are concerned. Though one man outside the palace was subtle enough that I am still not sure. He seemed eager to practice English, said he was going to visit a friend in Toronto, but kept mentioning his family’s shop, which was near the Hippodrome. The conversation appeared to have no end or goal in sight, and as we walked toward the entrance, it became clear that he thought we should see the sights together. No particular mention of telling me about their history, like the others I’ve met. Was he a tour guide like them? Probably, but he certainly kept me guessing.