Turkish Flags

It was the Irish poet Eamon Grennan who referred to washing on a line (in a photograph of a shanty town) as 'flags of no surrender'. The image of washing strung out across city streets is, of course, an old favourite with photographers; I only hesitate to call it a cliché because I am not convinced that any subject, per se, should be denigrated or dismissed as such. Whatever you may think, there it was in an Istanbul back-street, and I was grateful for that old sense of intimacies being aired, flicker of human warmth, and also for the wind that leant its body to the sheet, and of course the gulls.

I was with my son when I saw this, not far from the hotel (with his Smurf DVDs, etc.) I had managed to winkle him out of; he even allowed me to take him on the tram, along the interminable Istaklal Caddesi, all the way to Taksim Square. The tram took forever, even slower that I imagined, almost walking pace. It was fully dark by the time we reached Taksim, with a sickle (Turkish) moon above the streetlights, honking cars, crumbling apartments, domes and minarets. The wean became tired and ratty later, but he was great for awhile, and I held his hand as we walked back through the surging evening crowds to the hotel.