Tea, Sugar, A Dream

This, explained Sadik (the young man who tried to sell me a sponge in the market), is how you say thank you in Turkish. That is, how it sounds phonetically to a non-Turkish English-speaker. A beautifully simple (and curiously poetic) explanation. I have fallen a little in love with Istanbul. I spent most of the murky late afternoon wandering slowly across the great span of Galeta Bridge, from north to south, looking for a way to photograph what seems a national past-time: fishing off the bridge.

There must have been hundreds, rods waving like antennae from both sides: ancient and young: men, women, children... all dipping into the bountiful Golden Horn. Utterly enchanting (except for the wee fish, anchovies and sardines mostly as far as I could see, writhing in jars, bowls and buckets). Eventually I got to the end of the bridge and realised that there was a kind of shopping/restaurant area underneath. So I went down and looked up: yes, here was an interesting angle, and just enough bluish dusk left for my purposes. Hence the pic above.

Later I followed the flow into an underground (then overground) market: everything from cashews to air rifles, from sponges to chess sets, from rich rugs to tuppenny lollies. One of the last things I did was enter the building in the pic above, the New Mosque (1597 to 1663). It's the most prominent building on the bank, which is one reason why I was avoiding it (an obvious tourist magnet). But I am very glad I did enter it, my first venture under Islam's umbrella. They provide plastic bags for shoes at the door.

It seemed almost empty inside, and quite magical. There were signs on a rail requesting tourists to stop at that point. So (as this was outside the call to prayer), there was a vast stretch of carpet whose circular pattern mirrored what must have been the centre of the huge dome directly above; a bewildering array of lights hanging on wires, something of the feel of a puppet-theatre cum circus cum cathedral cum hot air balloon. I watched the man and youth in front of me do that solemn prayer-dance: kneeling, standing, bowing their foreheads to the ground (not in that order), mostly utterly silent, though I heard one person chanting and another singing almost under his breath as he walked out. Then I let the gravity of the place kneel my legs, partly so that I could take a couple of photos from that level, but only partly. Tea, sugar, a dream.