On the Road with Jack, and the trouble with Istanbul

Today I feel normal, relaxed and for the first time in too long I am not tired.  It has been a peaceful Sunday so far: no alarm to wake me, freshly squeezed orange juice, coffee and a leisurely chat over breakfast, followed by an hour's pilates and a bit of Spanish study.  I've luxuriated in the novelty of having the time to do these things.

Perhaps fittingly, my literary companion for the dizzying whirl of international travel has been On the Road by Jack Kerouac. This is mostly about the heady excitement of drug-fuelled, nonsensical voyages to go and "dig" American cities and "get kicks".  For me it's not been easy to get into, or empathise, and the impact of prose style is I think lessened with its age - its own iconic status probably means there has been too much imitation since to make it stand out.  That said, I'm beginning to be won over, and there are flashes of descriptive brilliance.  There are some parallels between my struggle to like the book and my struggle with Istanbul, probably much more than between my style of travel and Jack's.


The hectic writing style undoubtedly contributed to my mood the day in Istanbul I spent walking through the darkening city after work, pondering what it was that I just couldn't like about the place.  Perversely, it was as I weaved through the commuting crowds and choked on the fumes of queueing cars that this changed; following this train of thought down to the Bosphorus shore I really began to fall for the city I'd been so keen not to return to.



It was the man with the bread in a bag on a stick that started it. He was walking amongst the cars, selling bread rolls to the motorists - a step above the 'drive-in' bread kiosks they have at every street corner. It amused me, so I took a photo.  What followed was a flurry of scarcely coherent note-taking and bad photography, that summed up everything I thought and felt about the place.







It went like this (with some editing into full sentences):

Man selling bread on a stick in a bag. Roses and water [also being sold to the motorists].  Sirens, bus queues and pavement bikers [one of whom in particular had mobile phone wedged between head and helmet].  Murky sunset and the heavy unidentified floral scent breaking through the traffic fumes.  Kebabs and tea and headscarves.  Massive signs for English schools.  Hills and more hills.  Ataturk watching you eat [his picture is everywhere, including our office canteen].  Broken pavements and wonky steps.  Unaccountably falling for a place once you've freed yourself of trying to like it.  Walking the wrong way out of the metro and trying to remember the words for yes and no.

Ferry bow waves splashing the pavements as an old man sells books on the floor, people fish and grown men try bike tricks.  Commuters stream towards the ferry terminal, onto buses and into cars.  Hard to string together a single coherent thought from the boiling mass, and work out what I'm trying to say about this place.

Travelling is too often this edited and sanitised version of the world.  I see that in Madrid when I walk the same stretch of pavement hundreds of times and see a hundred different faces framed in the same photo; I saw the same in Florence.  I've appeared in the background of who knows how many strangers' favourite holiday photos. 

That's not the Istanbul I've seen, which is not the same as the Istanbul I've heard people rave about. At root it's just a city like any other, the stage for people's lives, and though that has it's own magic it requires a different kind of appreciation, more tempered and considered.  Istanbul on a mundane level is hard to love - choked up with cars, you take your life in your hands every time you cross a road, and there are simply too many people.  However, it does just have this energy, this vibrancy, and as night falls the place just twinkles.

 

I came round to thinking that the sheen of tourism is ok, really.  People go on holiday to escape their day to day life.  Maybe the illusion that everywhere is better than home doesn't necessarily produce the ideal perspective for appreciating your everyday life, but I'm glad they enjoy their trips.  And I came round to Istanbul.