Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

 The day I leave there are birds in the street. After the first one, my mum and I joke about a suicidal magpie. Then it is a crowd. Then several pigeons. It soon becomes clear that at dawn, the road belongs to the birds. They cluster around pedestrian crossings, sweeping for anything dropped during the course of a long Saturday night. They are slow to move. I don't want us to run over a pigeon. It seems like a bad omen. Watching them squabble over who gets to eat kebab vomit on a Sunday morning I can't help but wonder if I will miss England. 

The flight is more anxious than usual after I managed to catch a cold and then block one of my ears in the run-up. I've not had an ear problem for years, but I had a recklessly hot bath and my earwax became a problem. I mentioned this problem online and several people arrived with what I would say was a degree of relief to say that the worst pain they ever experienced was trying to fly with a sinus infection. I don't think it'll be that bad, but at the minimum I expect some discomfort. And here's a thing about me: I hate discomfort. Can't stand it actually. I think discomfort is awful and I won't listen to any disagreement. 

In the event it wasn't too bad, perhaps helped by frantically sucking on a Polo and various pressure equalizing exercises, as I gurned, blew, swallowed and waggled my jaw like I was coming up on a pill. Flying is, as always, an absolute privilege. Occasionally I am struck dumb by the magic of modernity. Seeing the world from the sky is extraordinary. The contours of the land, the delicate filigree of waterways catching the sunlight, the long sweep of the coast. The arc of this flight takes us over the Wash, the great estuary which bites a chunk out of the east coast of England. Dozens of winding channels disappear into the silt. The first time I went on a plane I found myself brought to tears at being able to see what should be reserved for the birds, surreptitiously dabbing at my eyes as we crossed over the Alps on the way to Ljubljana. 

It is a clear, bright day, and I am on the first of two flights. This will take me to Berlin, where I don't have time to do anything but mill around in Departures before boarding again and heading to Istanbul. Istanbul was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Several of the flights I was considering to Bangkok stopped over there, and it felt foolish to pass through one of the world's great cities without having a look around. The “look around” became a full week. Right now I am lucky: all I have is time. When I reach Thailand I intend to live more of a normal life. Exercise, work, write, spend days indoors. Drink on the weekend. Istanbul will be the holiday before the holiday. I expect to leave it feeling ghastly, that compound hangover and rich food sluggishness that makes you feel like you're in someone else's ill-fitting skin. It's better to accept this in advance. 

I'm afraid I get a real sick pleasure out of speaking a local language. I'm a pervert for it. Languages ​​are addictive and, without false modesty, I have a good ear for them. What I don't have is the attention span or commitment to remember much more than individual words and pleasantries, but nobody's nerfect. On the metro from the airport I practiced guessing the pronunciation before it came over the intercom, and used it to work out what the diacritics did and how to pronounce different letters. C without a diacritic is a J. Ç is ch. And on we go. Maybe with more of an attention span I'd be authentically bilingual rather than just traveler's bilingual. As it is I hope to one day be able to order a beer and apologize in at least 20 languages. 

The thing about Istanbul is that it has a lot of cats. Stop me if I'm moving too fast. But it's one thing to know this and quite another to intellectually process it. Istanbul has cats like some places have pigeons. Istanbul has pigeons too although you imagine fewer than usual. Because of the cats. I see my first one after emerging from the station at Sirkeci, weighed down by hours of travel, hauling my bag behind me, sweaty and overwhelmed, and there's a cat at the bottom of the escalator, plopped down in the middle of the corridor, diligently licking its arsehole. Perhaps grasping for something familiar and comforting, I get down on my haunches to see if the cat is interested in a fuss (it is not). And then I see there's another one on the far side, sprawled under a poster advertising a SIM card. A kitten freezes as I look at it. At the top of the escalator, out into the Turkish night, there are about four in varying states of relaxation, across benches, under bins, strutting calmly through the weaving feet of late commuters. 

What has to happen is a fundamental realignment of your approach to cats (unless you don't care for them, in which case you're well fixed, you just have to ignore about a hundred times more of them than usual). My instinct upon seeing a cat is almost always to offer it a fuss. Sometimes if it is hesitant I'll sit on the floor to avoid intimidating it - I have a tendency to loom. Unless I'm in an extreme rush I will adopt this approach 100% of the time. You see a cat, you touch it. This is axiomatic. 

In Istanbul this is not possible. There are simply too many cats. You would have to commit your whole day to experiencing Istanbul through a primarily cat-based process. The trip would become a slide show of images of bazaars, mosques, towers and ferries all blurred into the background, because in the foreground there is a cat, rolling over to have its belly tickled, though still with the implied threat that this privilege could be revoked at any moment. 

So instead you must become selective about your cat interactions. Perhaps over the natural course of the day you come into contact with one. You are sharing a bench, or the cat approaches you. Or you meet a cat of such overwhelming cuteness or friendliness that you have no choice but to pause for a moment. This happens once while walking back home from a bar. I meet a tiny kitten who comes trotting over, mewing piteously. I get down onto my haunches to say hello and it instantly jumps onto my thigh and then stands on its two tiny hind legs to nuzzle at my chin. I melt into a puddle of what is at this point, to be fair, about 30% Efes. These street cats have no reason to be so trusting, so friendly. What does this kitten know about people? But the thing about cats is that they are born with hearts of gold. 

A Turkish man passes me from behind, seeing only that I am hunched and motionless. “Are you okay?” he asks, as he steps under the streetlight. I gesture hopelessly at the kitten on my lap. I have nodes. He understands. 

Istanbul has things which aren't cats, of course. It has gold. Passing through the Grand Bazaar I have a thought which I have never had before, and probably never will, which is: maybe I should buy some gold. Perhaps I just needed to be in Constantinople, seat of emperors, to feel some of that ancient glory, feel the buttery warmth of it. Wouldn't gold look good on me? Don't I deserve gold? Should I not be bedecked? I have never been bedecked in anything, perhaps because I was just waiting for the right precious metal. 

This madness passes. I look around the Grand Bazaar and wonder if anyone actually buys anything. Certainly every guide I read on the topic says there's no point, unless you want to have your wallet inspected. Low quality stuff at an eyewatering mark-up, there's probably a shop down an alleyway 500m away selling the same stuff. But it is throng with people (the most visited tourist attraction on the planet according to some sources), peering at the same knock-off trainers and Turkish Delight. I suppose getting fleeced is the price you pay for the experience. Certainly in Istanbul you do have to bake in a degree of fleecing, even if you keep your wits about you. This is something I am having to come to terms with, having only ever been to Europe before, where you may still end up screwed over by a venal cab driver or a marked-up restaurant but you are less likely to be treated like you've got “MUG” painted on your forehead. 

It's terrible to admit but I don't end up entering a single one of Istanbul's many famous tourist attractions. I view the Ayasofya (formerly Hagia Sophia before it was desecularized) from the outside but wince at the price to get in. So too the Galata Tower. The queue for the Basilica Cistern stretches all the way around the corner and this captive audience are being hassled even as they wait. A good rule of thumb in Istanbul is that you know you're about to get fucked if the price is in Euros. 

The truth is that for the first couple of evenings I don't do much at all. A little jetlagged (although I only lost two hours), miserable at being half-deaf, knackered from walking around all day, I found myself back in my hotel room under the aircon playing Pokémon Gold on my phone and watching Taskmaster videos on the janky WiFi. The heat is sapping and there is also an emotional toll that comes from politely refusing dozens of restaurateurs in a row, at least for me - a precious and fragile introvert who is also too much of a people-pleaser to just ignore them. The word MUG starts appearing on my forehead like stigmata. Out, damned spot!

The moment of liberation finally arrives on a rooftop terrace above a kebab house, as the sun sets behind the Blue Mosque. Idly plumbing with my finger, there is a sudden pop and, like a drowning man bursting out through the surface, sensation floods in. I am no longer half dead. I make judicious use of a tissue and feel a weight lifted. I have been given permission by my ear to enjoy myself again. I finish what might be my fourth kebab of the trip and I go to get a beer. 

Istanbul, for the unaware, straddles the Bosphorus Strait, a wide waterway which connects the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Historically it has been known as the place that the East meets the West. When you take one of the busy commuter ferries across the water, you leave Europe and you enter Asia. It is a city cloven in two, although a road bridge leaps across a narrow point of the Bosphorus to the north and the Marmaray railway runs under it to the south. 

I take a ferry from west to east. I buy a Turkish coffee and a snack I can't read which turns out to be made of sesame seeds. Across the mouth of the Bosphorus I look down into the Mediterranean and see countless trawlers and container ships on the horizon, ghostly hulks of many shapes and sizes. Commuter ferry it may be but these must be tourist hours, because almost everyone is leaning out to take a picture, or staring at the retreating minarets and towers. 

The Asian side, considered by locals and expats to be the better of the two, has more of a relaxed, youthful feel to it. Most of the big ticket tourist attractions are in Sultanahmet and Beyoğlu on the Europe side, so you're most likely to be forced to run into an American there. I land in Kadıköy and make my way up narrow grid streets whose bars and shops spill out onto the pavement, my hand wrapped around something else hot and wrapped in bread as I wander.

Kadıköy becomes Moda: more spaced out, green, urbane. Young people smoke cigarettes outside cafes and a bar plays Muddy Waters. There are pomegranate trees by the water front. In a public gym a woman in a headscarf violently swings her lower half on some equipment which looks like it could double as a torture device. More young people, loafing around on the grass, playing with cats, snoozing in the sun on one of the massive flat rocks acting as breakwater. There is an atmosphere of complete contentment. 

This turns out to be just wishful thinking - to the tourist everyone looks content because they are content, drifting like a warm breeze past tennis courts and food vans selling simits and grilled corn. In fact the mood in Turkey is a little sour after yet another democratic crisis created by President Erdoğan attempting to remove a political rival (in this case by barring a popular opposition candidate from standing for office). 

In fact Turkey is in a constant democratic crisis; a friend explains to me what is happening and it's almost impossible to keep track of the extent. I suppose the privilege of the tourist is to only notice this sort of thing because I can't use the internet (social media platforms were briefly disconnected due to their role in co-ordinating popular opposition and marches). I did see a lot of coppers with guns around, but with my fresh eyes I didn't realize it was unusual.

Walking back up through Moda I noticed a man cautiously tying a Turkey flag to his balcony. There are a lot of flags around. A van drives past blaring out something on a megaphone, the face of a politician emblazoned on the side. The signs of discontent are there if you want to see them. 

Istanbul is an architecturally motley place. Although there are pale, sunbleached stone walls, great domed Ottoman mosques with spearlike minarets, blue roof tiles, wide imperial squares filled with fountains and palm trees, there are also dark-stained wooden lodges which look like they could have come from the Midwest, turn-of-the-century hotels and promenades with bay windows and courtyards, hulking modernist concrete blocks. Some neighborhoods like Besiktas look like they could have been teleported from Madrid, bright airy boulevards spotted with statues and low fencing. Others, such as the steep slopes above Karaköy, are exactly the kind of cobbled warrens where you imagine you might be lured in with the promise of fine silks and rosewater. 

It is also an extremely loud city. The calls to prayer, several times a day, are certainly atmospheric. The traffic is constant and swarms of scooters miss pedestrian toes by inches ( nb I am now writing this from Bangkok, so it's all relative - here was me thinking I'd seen a lot of scooters) . There is music, there is shouting, there are vendors drumming out a cacophony with metal skewers on their edges of their carts. An extremely stressed British father on what I have to assume is day 1 in Istanbul bellows, “Car coming Mikey! Car!” at a child who is meandering across a road. I begin to suspect he is temperamentally unsuited to Istanbul. 

Although I eat many things in Istanbul, two items stand out. 

Balık dürüm is something of a foodie choice, relatively unknown until recently when it was invented on a couple of streets in Istanbul. Dürüm is the ubiquitous kebab wrap (finished on the grill), and balık is fish, more commonly served as balık ekmek, a large filled sandwich. Some genius had the idea to serve it in wrap form and it is astonishingly good. They use a rich, oily fish, mackerel or a local option, blackened on the grill, and it is packed tight with crunchy vegetables, sour sumac, grilled peppers, mixes of nuts and dried herbs, pomegranate molasses, god alone knows what else. I eat the first one in a state of rapture. 

The wet hamburger falls very much on the other end of the spectrum. Allegedly invented by accident, it is a standard issue hamburger which is dunked, steamed or otherwise soaked in what can only really be described as tomato water, giving it a strange sweet-sour quality on top of the grilled meat and soft bread. I don't know why or how it works but it is the kind of experience that forces you to reconsider all of your preconceptions about food. Why should hamburgers not be wet? Is there a law? I don't think so. Hamburgers of the world unite. The only thing you have to lose is your chains. 

Late night in Maçka Park after spending the night in Besiktas, I eat a tahini flavored ice cream and watch a boxer train by punching into a band of luminous orange rubber, his friend straining on the other end. A boy lying on his back on a stone bench with his eyes closed sings Turkish folk music in a beautiful, deep voice, his cackling friends filming him on their phones. Bright streetlights filter through palm leaves. We are high above the city, so a network of lights spreads out to the horizon. Out the far side of the park some sort of go kart track blasts a recorded English accent welcoming us to Silverstone. God Save the King plays.

Down the hill I find a bar at the turn of a hill, buzzing with young people. I perch on a rickety chair near the bar, wobbling between the two halves of a broken paving slab. Cushions are arranged along the black fire escape as extra seating. I drink a rose and mint white sangria. I walk with an elliptical, curving kind of gait down the hill towards the tram stop. I buy another kebab. There is a cat on the seat next to me at the tram stop, and it's a friendly one with a miaow which sounds like someone opening their mouth for the dentist. 

On the way home I stand near a child who spends the entire trip compulsively giggling at things, his tinkling laughter filling the tram car. It passes perfumers, fish restaurants, kebab restaurants, late night supermarkets, rug shops, dessert shops with brightly lit lines of baklava and Turkish delight, spice shops, underlit mosques, corn carts still glowing like RPG quest markers, roasting chestnuts, cats, more cats, cats peering out from benches and under bushes. I get off the tram as Sultanahmet and I walk past the Ayasofya, the Blue Mosque, the gardens and the palm trees. 

The sprinklers are on at night, leaving little glowing puddles on the paths, wobbly reflections of the glowing minarets high above, and the cats collect to drink from them.