This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer who lives in North Calais.
Istanbul is disconcertingly surreal. We’ve thought about it for so long, probably over a decade, that actually being here is often so dreamlike it seems we could easily float away like the wisps of fog off the Bosporus that stalk the evening.
It doesn’t help at all that each step we take brings us further back in time.
A nine-hour Turkish Air flight from Boston — our first out of the country since pre-Covid — demands we take an afternoon to recover, essentially unfolding, regaining our original physical structures from the stress positions routinely imposed in “economy” — airline jargon for “steerage.” Of course, you can ransom your way out of dee- vein thrombosis by purchasing a seat in the Less-Likely-to-Die-in-Flight section or simply share the misery by sitting together, for which the asking price on this flight was — wait for it — $39.95. Each. No, we didn’t and we got adjacent seats anyway by asking nicely.
Although the city is beyond huge with over 15 million residents, seemingly stretched to the horizon in all directions, thanks to Helene’s near obsessive research, we find ourselves in what feels like a small European village with narrow, rain-slicked cobblestone streets, fading in the mist as they wind their way down to the water that surrounds this small peninsula.
The next morning, after a walk of barely 100 meters, we enter the Hippodrome, where Constantine presided over ancient chariot races and we encounter the rest of the world. The crowd is monstrous. The lines are serpentine, coiled in enormous loops through the plaza, around corners and out of sight.
We decide to begin with the Hagia Sophia but literally cannot find where the queue ends, so we settle for the Topkapi Palace, once the home for thousands of Moors, subjects of sultan Suleiman the magnificent, whose former digs encompass a walled-in area roughly the size of an average Olmsted-designed city park, once measuring over 700,000 square meters.
Completed in 1478 by Mehmed the Conqueror, the palace served as the administrative center of the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years, the official residence of Ottoman sultans and 5,000 of their subjects, which sounds like a lot but is far outnumbered by those stalking the grounds and massed outside, waiting to breach the ramparts like hordes of marauding Mongols. We begin referring to them as “Bus People.” Not unlike the leaf-peeper caravans Vermonters experience this time of year, following a flag-bearing guide, ID card affixed to a lanyard, a backstage pass to the world.
Unencumbered by anything like a schedule, we roam far and wide, seeing what there is to see, absorbing as much as we can: huge underground cisterns that once supplied Istanbul with water, also under Constantine, one of hundreds beneath the city; the incredible Blue Mosque, built in1603, capping two centuries of Ottoman design with six minarets visible for miles; and a mysteriously short line late one afternoon and coveted entry into the Hagia, a massive Greek Orthodox church until the overthrow of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
We even have enough time to watch the dozens of fishermen, shoulder to shoulder along the Golden Horn, whipping 10-foot surf rods like so many rapid-fire metronomes, in search of dinner, surrounded by the urban tumult of cars, buses, trains and ferries pulsating along the shore.
After a cab ride through city traffic, a short flight and a van shuttle through rolling plains backed by hazy, distant mountains that feel like the front range of the northern Rockies, we arrive in Goreme, a small town in Cappadocia surrounded by topography we decide is straight out of “Star Wars.” Which we joke about only to learn days later that scenes from the franchise debut were actually filmed here in the mid-1970s.
The landscape is otherworldly, completely stunning. It would make perfect sense on the James Webb telescope, a glimpse of a heretofore undiscovered distant galaxy, light years away. What’s more, apart from the comparatively small section set aside as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, we seem to have unfettered access to everything else. We can go wherever we want. No restrictions. No rules. And no signs, which tended to make a few of our ventures more … adventurous.
As a natural wonder, this area of Cappadocia stands out as a sublime example of what wind, water, and the fire of volcanic activity can achieve through millenniums, but it is much, much more. Humans have populated this area for thousands of years, creating a vast art installation depicting how generations of ancient people with nothing but hand tools created a masterpiece — a mind-boggling feast for our 21st-century senses. As my gaze flits from this point to that, I’m riveted. Mesmerized by what I’m looking at but completely aware I could never do it justice in words — it’s indescribable. But of course I’ll try.
Five consecutive days we cover ground, miles and miles. We walk, we hike, we trek, we climb, we scramble. Pulling muscles, straining ligaments, stretching tendons, raising blisters, aggravating bunions and gnarling toes. We ogle, we stare, but mostly we stand in awe.
What at first appear to be sand dunes are flowing hillsides of solid rock that turn orange, pink and lavender in the setting sun. There are spires, obelisks and pinnacles called “fairy chimneys” and giant toadstools that resemble the seven dwarves.
But then, high on the cliffs, doors, windows, staircases and verandas. The idea that people lived up there is staggering. Monastics, resisting Arab invasions in the fourth century, were the first, and their weathered achievement remains for us to marvel.
After a steep climb, we find monasteries, churches and even a cathedral complete with tall pillars and carved arches chipped from the solid rock.
We strain our necks looking up at the unlikely, still colorful frescoes that line walls and ceilings, and the stories are no longer stories. They have come to life. Finally out there again, we feel as though we have, too.
