Istanbul: allusions through the time

Once I was lucky enough to see Istanbul, huge, screaming, and forever running, as it will never be repeated again.

It was 2021, during the pandemic. A moment when the city was open to tourists but not yet to its residents.

It's hard to imagine now, but Istanbul was quiet, deserted, and clean. Like a library or an unpopular museum in the middle of the day on a weekday. Hollow, absolutely empty streets, where the voices of muezzins echoed.

From our Airbnb apartment window, we had a view of the Sea of Marmara. A huge blue bay merging into the sky, dotted with minarets on all sides. And only white seagulls cried and the occasional honk of a ship.

Every morning me and my aunt were brewing coffee in a tall copper Turkish coffee pot on a gas stove. And we drank it silently for a long time, meditatively looking out through the window on this view. In general, there was no need to go out at all, with such a view and this coffee.

But we did.

For example, an guided tour about the White Emigration in Constantinople against the backdrop of the almost extinct Istiklal with empty shop windows and closed cafes. Now, in 2023, that excursion seems almost prophetic. But this is only an allusion or a hint. A small repetition in the endless canon of life.

But the feeling of walking around the city, with a little touch of weightless, where eternity is here, next to you, as if you could touch it with your hands, - that feeling is what I remembered. And I will keep it.