The Three Romes by Francis R. Nicosia

Author:Francis R. Nicosia [Nicosia, Francis R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe
ISBN: 9781351472692
Google: UywrDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05T01:30:07+00:00

TEST MATCH INONU STADIUM

MEN ARE calling chayl chayl and in the lounge most seats are taken, nobody wanting to be topside in this weather. Most ferries on the Bosphorus, unlike those on the Golden Horn, hug one shore or the other until they come to the chain of buoys below the entrance to the Black Sea. Then they turn around and take the same route back to Stamboul. Our ferry picks and chooses, crisscrossing the strait from Europe to Asia. This way, we see more for our money. The white-jacketed steward brings us our tea in glasses, sugar for me, lemon for her. Gonul is almost forty but slim and trim and hopes to keep it like that. To Turks this makes her uncomely, and the male eyes that look her over slide away without interest. She can live without this interest. On the upholstered bench that backs against ours, the young Turkish man and the girl from Down Under have struck up an acquaintance. He is all pomander, Levantine to the tips of his mustache. If she looks into his eyes for five minutes, he says, she will likely find herself pregnant.

Turkish men, Gonul says, will run their hand up your dress without a by-your-leave. When you tell them hands off, they wonder what ails you. Turks need to be taught a lesson, but halfmeasures won’t serve. Take the White Eunuchs, who still made trouble in the harem even after their testicles were crushed or removed. However, the Grand Turk had their penises cut off, and the eunuchs left the harem girls alone.

As we ease out of the landing, I look back at the motes in air that compose Sirkeji Station. Beside the iskele underneath Galata Bridge, the fishermen in their yellow slickers have blended with their kayiks. Art imitates nature, also the other way round. Some cities seem obedient to the estimating eye of a painter. Rome is “the light that never was on sea or land,” and in Rome they take their cue from Turner. Kokoschka should have painted the onion domes of Moscow where truth to nature is apparent but skewed. Istanbul is discontinuous-seeming. Truth comes in multiples like the names of Allah, and for this city the painter is Seurat. Light filters through scrim, shadows infiltrate the light, and the contours of buildings are like the dotted lines that make letters and shapes in a printout. The continuities are there, only blurred.

The crosscurrents off Sarayburnu are no match for the ferry but once they get hold of the junk in the water they don’t let it go. Plastic containers, cigaret wrappers, and discarded animal parts from the slaughterhouses up the Horn jog in place and can’t move to port or starboard. The Harpies who fouled the table of the blind king Phineus lived on the Bosphorus, but didn’t hold a candle to Stamboullus. Offending ladies of the harem were drowned off the point in sacks weighted with stones, and the Greek renegade Ibrahim, the lover and counselor of the Emperor Suleiman, drowned his whole harem here, wanting a change.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.