"To some degree, we all worry about what foreigners and strangers
think of us," Pamuk says. "My interest in how my city looks to western
eyes is—as for most Istanbullus—very troubled;
like all other Istanbul writers with one eye on the West, I sometimes
suffer in confusion."
"To see Istanbul through the eyes of a foreigner always gives me
pleasure," Pamuk goes on. Flaubert, Gide, Nerval, Knut Hamsun, and
Hans Christian Andersen all visited Istanbul and recorded their
impressions, and in most instances what they saw was a fading
Orientalism that ceasted to exist as soon as it was described—the
harem, the grotesque and the pictueresque, dervishes, hubble-bubble
pipes, the slave market, Ottoman clothing, floppy sleeves, Arabic
calligraphy, and, he says, the hamals, the porters,
though such men can still be seen, heavily burdened with huge loads
on wooden pack frames, trudging up and down the cobbled streets of the
old city. Whenever I began to generalize about Istanbul's modernism,
I encountered an exotic vignette—a shroud, a fez, a minaret,
a veil, a donkey, or something grilling fish over coals by the
roadside.
But Pamuk's book, like all passionate books, is a bewitchment.
Once you've read his Istanbul, you have been persuaded to
see the city with his eyes—a gloomy, smoky warren of narrow
lanes and conflicted families, serene, half fictional, like a city
in a dream.
I find most cities nasty, but I can see that Istanbul is habitable,
a city with the soul of a village. Unless there is a bomb in the
bazaar, or a Kurd-related outrage, there is never news of Istanbul in the
Western press. To say it is beautiful is so obvious as to be frivolous, yet
the sight of its mosques and churches can be almost heart-stopping.
I am imprevious to its charm, even the word "charm," but I admire
Istanbul for its look of everlastingness, as though it has always existed
(it has been a noble city since its first incarnation as Byzantium 1,700
years ago, and looks it in part). Most of all I like the city for its
completeness and its self-sufficiency: it is a finished work, distinctly
itself. Of course, you can buy gold and carpets in the Grand Bazaar, or
jewelry and leather goods in the Egyptian bazaar, but everything else is
available throughout the city too, because Turkey makes
everything—stationery, cheap clothes, computers, knives, cigarettes,
refrigerators, furniture. Heavy industry flourishes. The newspaper
business is lively and competitive, book publishing is energetic,
Turkish literacy is high, and book sales are brisk.
Give the fact that Turkey shares borders with Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Arme[nia]