east meets west

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Istanbul appeared to us to be a modern, clean, efficient, largely western city, with some very eastern twists. I was impressed by the many head scarves I saw women wearing, and further struck by the lack of women on the streets and in teahouses after work and in evening. Where are all the women? became a refrain. Five times a day the city echoes with the call to prayer, and it almost seemed as if some of the bigger mosques were playing off each other with their chanting. The many byzantine churches have almost all been retrofitted with minarets. But at first it was tough to tell the difference from Athens: the food is similar, the people look similar, clothes as well, the music is not so different...you can take the metro from the airport into town. We went to Taksim Square, night life central, to hear "Turkish music," by which we meant not Turkish acoustic folk singers, or Turkish pop, or Turkish versions of western tunes, but old fashioned traditional tunes. We found it, in a small club vaguely reminiscent of the Half Moon in Silver Spring MD, decorated with posters of famous revolutionaries from Che Guevara, and the bouncer told us we'd hear "Turkish and Kurdish music." As the night went on the crowd got wilder and began dancing line dances, which were very similar to Greek dances. And of course we joined in.

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Photos

anya sofia
muslim signs converted this early byzantine church, for nearly 1000 years the biggest domed open space in the world, to a giant mosque

anya sofia 2
this mosaic marks the founding of Constantinople and of the church

muslim stained glass
in the blue mosque

Topkapi palace tile
a wall of tile form the 4th courtyard of Topkapia palace, which is huge and aastounding--