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Published: September 17th 2009
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Hi Everyone!
I have spent the last five days in Istanbul. It was supposed to be six days, but I missed my flight on the 11th because I decided to take the train to the airport instead of the bus. I figured that the train would be faster which it was but it was also about an hour late, and then it was too late to catch the bus.
So I ended up paying an extra 49 euro to change my plane ticket, and I have been told that it could have been a lot worse.
Istanbul straddles the boundary between Asia and Europe and is considered part of the Middle East. It has a population of 12 million people. and is the fifth most populous city in the world. (New York City is number 13.) You can really feel the press of people in the streets and every five minutes there is someone calling at you: "Hey pretty lady, please come into my shop/ try my food / buy my pottery / enjoy my bad English / give me money / feel guilty for ignoring me." The first day or two this really annoyed me and I struggled to find
something good to say about the city other than the architecture is beautiful. In addition to sheer size of the city, Turkey is a Muslim country. There is a significant presence of women walking around wearing burqua, which amounts to what looks like a giant black sheet that covers them from head to toe. As someone who greatly values individual freedom I find something that essentially erases someone's outward identity to be quite disturbing. What would the world be like if everyone had to wear black sheets? Where physical identity is irrelevant? You wouldn't be able to judge anyone on what they looked like at all. You wouldn't have to diet to look good in a bikini or try 10 different types of face soap to get rid of your acne, and just forget plastic surgery; what would be the point? And there would be no such thing as a bad hair day. Though the cosmetic and fashion industry would suffer greatly, otherwise maybe it would be more egalitarian. It makes you question the conclusions that you draw from someone's appearance. And communicating with someone takes on different dimensions when you can't see their face.
This issue made me really
watch the people around me, and there are plenty of them. Rather than a homogeneous showing of black sheets there were women in suits, raincoats, tank tops, and dresses. Almost all the local women were wearing headscarves, but I even saw one girl dressed in goth black and red with a matching red headscarf. And I realized that freedom is about choice. If you choose to wear a black sheet you should be able to. Wear a sheet, wear a fez, wear polka dotted spandex, wear whatever you want. It seemed to me that here in Istanbul as long as you had money to spend, no one cared what your wearing and in that sense it is a place after the American capitalist heart. Unfortunately it is only women who get singled out for this cultural fashion. And as it felt about 90 degrees out on most days I doubt head to toe black would have been the comfort clothing of choice. And it is impossible to say what kind of personal pressures someone faces at home, but as a city Istanbul seems quite accepting to me. And the architecture is beautiful.
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Tom
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I see no pictures of cats