Here are some notes about Istanbul.
Women
There are almost no women out in public during the day in the hotel's neighbourhood. I counted one morning on the long walk up the hill towards the bazaar, which took me along several blocks of a very busy street, and there were four women, of whom one or two were probably tourists. Elsewhere in the city, things are different. Across the Golden Horn, or even a few blocks up the hill, there are plenty of women about, most of them in western clothes. Maybe a quarter wear a headscarf, and a few percent wear a burqa, always without a face-veil. It's rare to see a woman working in a shop or restaurant in this neighbourhood, too, but I don't think that's true of the city generally.
Spirograph kits
Around Sultanahmet, this is all the street vendors sell. They stand on the sidewalk, making endless spirograph drawings on little tables. The drawings are just a little bit like the geometric frescoes on the domes of mosques and mausolea, and I have an almost certainly wrong theory that this -- or Islam's discouragement of figurative art generally -- is one reason Spirography is huge in Istanbul. Or, it could be that someone got hold of a huge shipment of spirograph kits cheap.
Carpet-sellers
You need to exercise constant vigilance to avoid buying a carpet in the tourist centre of Istanbul. Here's a typical encounter with a carpet seller.
You're sitting on a bench. Though there are vacant benches nearby, a man sits beside you, leaving about a foot between you. You both sit in silence for a moment, then he asks you where you're from. Oh, he has friends there. How do you like Istanbul? How long are you staying? You know, his family's shop is nearby, in case you'd be interested in coming and having a look around and a cup of tea. Not really interested? How can anyone not be interested in carpets? Is it the transport? Because they can be shipped. No? Well, have a nice day.
Some carpet-sellers just try to trap you into coming along to the shop by making it impolite to refuse. You could learn their script by rote. The better ones, though, are artists who can approach a total stranger, start a genuine conversation, and turn it gracefully to the subject of work generally, then to carpet-making specifically, and then to the shop 'his family' runs nearby. It's a tricky business, convincing a total stranger to go to a carpet shop, and it's a shame, both for these touts and for the tourists, that Turkey's economy is such that people this talented aren't put to better uses.
Other people
Apart from those with carpet-sellers, here's the longest conversation I've had with a Turk. On a crowded tram, a man took the seat opposite me, looked over, and sang 'tell me your name, tell me your number'. Asked to repeat himself, he said 'tell me your name, tell me your number -- Justin Timberlake, right?'. Oh, right. He asked where I was from, and we talked about that. Then, after about a minute's silence, he sang something else, and said 'Robbie Williams. Rock and roll.'
People have actually been quite friendly; it's just that few speak much English. Friendlier and more civil than in most cities. The conversation above's not much, but it's probably longer and more sensible than any I've ever had with a stranger on, say, the TTC.
Other tourists
I was at the mausolea of the sultans by the Hagia Sophia. In front of each pavilion, there's a stretch of rubber matting and a sign, in English, telling you not to step onto the matting in your shoes. As I was coming out, a guard gave a little cry of anguish. A tourist was standing in his shoes on the marble threshold of the tomb itself. He proudly showed the guard how he had jumped over the matting, thus obeying the signs.
Pictures I didn't take
- A hefty, conservatively-dressed Turkish matron on a tiny chair under a steel overpass near the Galata Bridge trying to sell toy ray guns. She did this by waving one around with the trigger held down so it made loud shooting noises and flashed coloured lights.
- A man breaking apart old furniture with an axe at the side of the street.
- An old man with glasses sitting at a tiny table in the park working at an old mechanical typewriter. Sometimes with other men around, possibly commissioning him to type out some form or other.
- Friday's noon prayers (the Jumu'ah) in the street outside the hotel. For about a block of the steep, busy, cobblestoned street, a hundred or more men prayed on carpets, leaving a narrow path on one side for people to pass.
- Unsettling child mannequins in the streets around the Grand Bazaar -- creepy to begin with, many were badly worn and damaged, so that the stores seemed to be selling clothes for kids with gruesome injuries or horrible skin diseases.
- A man with a falcon on his arm near the hotel, taking pictures of it with a mobile phone. Not for the tourists, and not attracting any particular attention; just hanging out with a falcon.
- A 350-pound Turkish man wearing a gigantic 'Frankie Says Get Out' t-shirt edging along a narrow sidewalk, followed by his tiny headscarfed wife.
