Istanbul.
You are my story without words, but with feelings, smells, sounds and all the little things you can touch every day in this amazing city. Istanbul is like a dream coming true. I have spent months feeling the city with my eyes, my skin, my breathe, my tears.
You can ask all the visitors of Istanbul around the world. They all have this feeling of plenitude and serenity at the moment they speak with you, as if they came back to Istanbul. So I always say: if you have seen Istanbul once, you will see it twice, and if you have seen twice, you will see it three times, … sonsuza kadar.
My steps always guided me like a sultan or an emperor through the secrets of the streets and the little colored houses. Padişah gibiyim. Everywhere I put my eyes, the beauty surrounded me. The more I walked, the more Istanbul lived inside me, like a part of mine, a vital organ. It’s my breathe, all the bits of my heart.
Streets are overcrowded. « Today, it is kalabalık« . Let’s walk. No matter if it is cold, I will cross the bridge with majesty to honor the fishermen. Men of the köprü, men of patience. Günaydın, sevgi Istanbul’um.
Every morning, a simit in my hands, I crossed the city, I crossed the Boğaz, the Bosphorus, I crossed the Haliç, the Golden Horn. It was like a song that you repeat on your head because you like it. Istanbul is the song that lets me dance. The same gestures every day, the rituals of life.
All the Turkish words I have learned travel now around my blood and navigate like a vapur. My heart is an iskele. Istanbul is my journey.
The sky was welcoming the calls of the prayer… Each call is a beehive, the sounds touch the clouds. And the seagulls, martılar…The seagulls became my friends, beginning a conversation in the air, telling me the secret of happiness… Living in Constantinople.
Dur. Otur. Bekle. Stop. Sit down. Wait. No need to speed in Istanbul. I advise you to take your time and look around you. Close your eyes and biraz dinle. The waves advise me to move on, the sky urges me to stay. Stay with me, stay with us, don’t leave Byzance. Memnun olduk, you are a part of us.
Crossing the Bosphorus, I am hearing an old song of the Black Sea… « Denizde kararti var bu gelen kayik midur? Ben ozledum yarumi ağlasam ayip midur?« . It takes me to the North, for meeting the Black Sea. I am feeling the wind on my face, it is cold and refreshing. It is cold and biting. It is cold and it makes you good. You are awake… no, you are alive. And the skyline is breathtakingly beautiful. Galata is swinging, sol, sağ, sol, sağ. Boğaz is playing the conductor of a famous orchestra. People get bogged down in the depth of water, admiring the notes of its music.
I land in Asia, in Üsküdar, and Mihrimah is welcoming me with her dark side, waiting the message I brought to her from her lighted sister in Fatih. I turn towards the sea, and I see the sunset on the coupoles of the mosques that murmur the stories of glory of their heroes, or the madness of their princes.
I am walking down the streets. I am following children screaming and playing with cats. They are the masters of the place. Children or cats? The beautiful cats do like pashas, and children like the sons of sultans. Kediler kardeşlerim, çocuklar sevinçim. In the huge maze, my step lead me to a narrow and slopping street.
Deeply sad, profoundly mysterious, intensively attractive. Muhteşem Istanbul. Amazing Istanbul.
Istanbul Delight 