Upon Walking Along the Golden Horn

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Last Saturday, May 21, I walked almost the entire length of the Golden Horn. My goal was to visit a village of Muslim pilgrimage, Eyüp, and check out some interesting sites along the way. To get there, I would pass through the neighborhoods of Fatih, Fener and Balat. These districts are a reminder that for centuries after the Muslim conquest, Christians and Jews made up about 40% of Istanbul’s population. It was a beautiful, clear day with a light breeze that made the walking easy. (OK, what made the walking easy was because the sidewalk is absolutely flat, free of dogs and tourists, and the traffic was light.)
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The Golden Horn looks great on maps, but it is very sad when seen in person. It is a flooded river valley that flows southeast into the Bosphorous, a natural harbor that first attracted settlers over 9,000 years ago. The Horn eventually enabled Constantinople to become a powerful and very rich port. Quote: "According to legend, the Byzantines threw so many valuables into it during the Ottoman conquest that the waters glistened with gold." Now, it resembles the Seattle Ship Canal, polluted and lined by empty, rusting ships, warehouses, bridges and docks. Seagulls perch and preen in serene boredom upon these modern, iron-oxide relics.
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I began my walk in Karakoy ("dark village"), on the northern side of the estuary. I crossed the Galata Bridge for the first time on foot. This bridge was constructed approximately where the chain was laid across the Horn to protect the Italian ships during the siege of 1453. It offers a splendid view of Istanbul’s seven hills, each bristling with minarets. It was a good day for fishing -- all the plastic buckets I passed contained suffocating anchovies hauled in by poles stout enough to tame tarpon.
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Once I had reached the end of the bridge and turned northwest, and had fought my way through the crowds of tourists surrounding the New Mosque and Spice Bazaar, I entered a shadowy valley created by walls of rusty corrugated tin on my right, mounted by spirals of concertina wire, and over 40 tour buses parked on my left. (Walking Brain: Why the concertina wire? There’s nothing but dilapidated warehouses over there. [Perhaps to keep out the non-existent homeless people.] And why is it called concertina wire? I thought a concertina was a small accordion. [Maybe the wires holding open the folds of the bellows mechanisms are interwoven.] Did Vivaldi compose a concerto for concertina? [Probably not.] But I bet Hindemith did! [Walking Brain does not have a sidewalk to follow, like I do.])
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The district of Fatih was named after Mehmed II, the Conqueror (Fatih). Its crowning monument is a mosque originally built in 1470, destroyed in an earthquake in 1766, and immediately rebuilt in baroque style. It is one of the largest kulliye (collection of buildings surrounding a mosque) in the city, with 8 medresses (Muslim theological schools), a hammam (Turkish public bath), a han (office block) and a hastane (hospital). For being such an impressive holy site, I was intrigued by the number of roaming roosters and hens and the amount of graffiti. (Walking Brain: Why is there so much graffiti? One of the first things that struck me upon arriving in Istanbul was the lack of graffiti compared to other large cities. Why here in this profoundly Muslim site? [Perhaps there is neither money nor incentive for removal.])
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I walked on into the Fener ("lighthouse") district. A shoe-shine guy brushed past me and accidentally dropped a brush. I called to him, picked up the brush and handed it back to him. He thanked me profusely, shook my hand, called me "a gentleman," and offered to give me a free sandal shine. I was feeling pretty good about myself by that time, so I thought, 'Sure, why not?' Then he told me that he was a Kurd from Ankara and couldn’t get a break in Istanbul, and that his wife was still in Ankara with his five children, one of whom was in the hospital. Then he asked me to pay for the shine. Duped again! I gave him my pocket change and continued on.
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My next stop was the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. Nominally the head of the whole G.O. church, the Patriarch is now shepherd to a diminishing flock in and around Istanbul. The Patriarchate is all that remains of what was once a thriving Greek enclave, where many wealthy residents rose to positions of prominence in the Ottoman Empire. I walked up a steep incline and entered the Patriarchate through a side door. The main door was welded shut in memory of Patriarch Gregory V (I am not making this up -- there are famous dead Gregories all over the place), who was hanged here for treason in 1821 after encouraging the Greeks to overthrow Ottoman rule. The Patriarchate centers on the basilica-style Church of St. George, which was built in 1720, but which contains many older artifacts, gilded icons and furniture.
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I walked back downhill and visited a really unusual building, the Church of St. Gregory -- just kidding, St. Stephen of the Bulgars. This entire church is constructed in cast iron, even the internal columns and galleries. (I have never been in a church before where, if you flick your finger against a column, it goes 'bong!') The history of its construction mirrors the whole dead Gregory thing. Gregory V was executed at the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, 1821-32. Later, the Bulgarian community broke away from the authority of the Greek Patriarchate just up the hill. The Bulgarians were issued an ultimatum by the sultan: if you want a separate church, you must build it in one week. Pre-fabricated sections of cast iron were created in Vienna in 1871, shipped down the Danube to the Black Sea to the Bosphorous, and St. Gregory’s, sorry, St. Stephen’s was assembled in one week.
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It is really quite an astonishing building, an all-metal church. The echo is perfect for (dare I say it?) Gregorian chant and Orthodox hymnody. The church still serves the Bulgarian community today. The congregation keeps the tombs of the first Bulgarian patriarchs permanently decorated with flowers. The church stands in a park which runs down to the Golden Horn, dotted with trees and flowering shrubs. As I was walking back down to the waterfront, a shoe-shine guy brushed past me. He dropped a brush. I instinctively picked it up. Without me calling to him, he spun around, looked surprised and called me "a gentleman." In the immortal words of George W. Bush, "Fool me once ... uh ..."
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I have to report that Eyüp was a disappointment. Historically, it is the burial place of the standard bearer of the Prophet Mohammed, Eyüp Ensari. The wealthy elite established mosques and street fountains in the village but, above all, they chose Eyüp as a place of burial. Basically, Eyüp is one huge cemetery. Yet it is a place of pilgrimage for Muslims from all over the world. I heard many languages that I did not recognize, and saw no casual tourists.
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Whereas most Americans consider cemeteries to be spooky places, the Ottoman graveyard is a garden where the living stroll among the dead without morbid inhibitions. The gravestones are often symbolic: from their decorations, one can determine the gender, occupation, rank and even the number of children of the deceased. For instance, the size of turban reflected a gentleman’s status; a differently shaped turban indicated a member of the Sufi order; women’s gravestones have a flower for each child.
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I took a ferry back down the Horn, sun-burnt, footsore and oxygen-hazed. The boat zigzagged slowly from one iskele (dock) on the south shore to the north shore of the Horn, back and forth like a giant grandmother doing somnambulant aquatic needlework, until I was finally deposited in Eminönü (umlauts on the, oh hell, who cares?) Trying to get from the ferry dock back to the Metro was actually frightening. A turgid torrent of humanity slowly struggled down the steps that led underground. One hesitant step at a times, I became gradually encased in a lava-like wall of humanity, oozing downward. Anxious shopkeepers tried to serve as foot-traffic cops, shouting and waving, but the living stream had a mind of its own. I was glad I was taller than most so that I could see potential openings, but they always seemed to close before I could get to them. I became worried that if someone were to lose it and start screaming, there would be a deadly stampede. I became worried that it might be me who would start screaming.
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Then I was hit on the head by the eagle. The shops that line the sides of this sluggish underground passage feature cheap clothes and noisy, plastic battery-powered toys. At ground level, toy police cars, tanks and trucks flash, whiz and whirl, while plastic airplanes and birds circle above, tethered to hooks in the ceiling. One of the circling eagles lost its mooring, fell and hit me on the head. I am proud to report that I did not scream, hence preventing the potential public panic. Being able to write this paragraph is proof of my (if I may so humbly say) heroic power of self control.
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