Confused and Confusing: the city of Istanbul

My first day in Istanbul, I climbed the spiral, multi-colored stairs to the rooftop terrace of the Chill Out Hostel to join the morning in its half-baked daze. In the impatient congestion of horns and traffic below, the city lulled, choked -- as if, in the heat, it had no appetite for itself. The milky sprawl of Istanbul splashed like thick paint against the blue of the Bosporus below, buildings crammed together with such disregard for organization, the brier patch network of roads below all but disappeared from view. Mosque minarets, two pointed turrets that looked like tiny castles in the sky, poked their snouts up above the city mess, piercing the skyline in every direction you turned. As I sat enjoying the few minutes before my skin, toned a lovely office-white, would start to scorch, I noticed the tumble of buildings surrounding the terrace, some modern and dilapidated, others ancient and dilapidated -- all lampooned by hundreds of satellite dishes clustered among their eaves like misplaced dinner dishes. I thought the decay of the city was rather charming, like a sagging bottom or wrinkled face appreciated simply for its seasoned, veteran status; for all the time and life it lived through so pronouncedly displayed on its surface. Below me, some Turkish kids -- who I would later realize were ALWAYS shouting and explained the seemingly odd behavior of my Turkish friend back home -- kicked a soccer ball around wearing loudly red Coca Cola shirts and (*squint*) what looked like Air Jordans. A misplaced kick drove the ball into the ancient remnants of a nearby amphitheater; one boy ran after it, stopping to pee in the corner of the stone relic before sliding easily back to the streets.

I sat thinking of modernity, of the word 'classic', of myths and of archetypal cultural emblems -- these were all mashed together in this heaving, cloudless city. Istanbul was more than cosmopolitan; it was stuck somewhere in between the pride of time-honored tradition and the pride of modernization. Two-thousand-year old vestiges of empire sat idly by in the streets, overgrown with moss and stray kittens, so firmly established in Istanbul's history that they needed no rope and ticket booth. Instead they were preserved exactly in their original form, as a place to be lived in, used; a functional and practical museum. Modernity appeared suddenly, often subtly, but sometimes in the overtly peacockish display that could only have been funded to impress and inspire foreign investment. Take the Bosporus Bridge. It looked more like the Golden Gate than any other bridge I have seen but the fiery orange hues had been replaced with lights; lights that turned purple, green, blue and night-sky-sparkles within a matter of minutes. It looks a bit like a thinner, dieting version of Las Vegas casino boards.

But flashy bridges aside, Istanbul had embraced modernity with some semblance of grace. Jewel brands like Doritos had squeezed out a place for themselves on the shelves of closet-sized stores, but rejected -- or at least buried out of sight between the folds of narrow streets and buildings -- were the financial skyscrapers, McDonald's and corporate boxes. There was no room for boxes here, and as for the skyscrapers, well, they would have had to compete with mosque minarets. So international branding there may have been, but it was less offensive when it appeared in a market that took up less space than what an American supermarket would reserve just for its pharmaceutical section. And although Istanbul had not escaped what I saw as the West's appetite for stuff -- turkish delights, scarves, apple tea, curry powder, cell phones -- all this stuff had been parceled out for redistribution to the many rather than the few. Rather than a Wal-mart, you got an entire street full of tiny shops that sold the same thing, whether that was toilets, cameras, or fabric. Talk about selection. Noticing this, it didn't surprise me to recall a conversation with a Turkish ex-pat who had left because the only job opportunities were in advertising or a traditional family shop.

So...traditional or Western, this city's inclination to spend and consume? The thousands of years of history buried here garnished with a few encounters with the West led me to bet on tradition. But now, I look down from the terrace and the bridge is Taxi-yellow, giant red cranes scratch the sky, and I mistake a radio tower for a Mosque minaret.

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