Saying Goodbye to Istanbul

The conference is long over, the friends I’ve met have departed, and now it’s just me in Istanbul. I’ve packed my belongings and moved to a charming hostel in the old Sultanahmet area, tucked in an alley, just a five minute walk from the major mosques and museums.

I’ve been spending most of my days hanging out at the Metropolis Cafe, a charming, French-inspired restaurant with slightly overpriced food, but a great atmosphere and a wood-burning fireplace, which is cozy on the cold winter nights.

I’ve made friends with the waiters here, who ply me with tea so that they’ll have someone to talk to while they stand outside during the slow hours of the day, trying to flag down the very few tourist that come to Istanbul in December.

Mostly, I’ve been talking with Devrim, a garrulous boy with a crooked smile who boasts that people call him the “fanny magnet,” because he can get any girl he wants to. Australian, American, French, Turkish, he’s dated them all, and can tell you the intricacies of each nationality? The most beautiful are the Swedish. The English? “The smell. Like everything. Food, cigarettes, sweat, they just have every smell with them,” he cajoles.

But there’s a deeper side to him, of course. It seems like his obsession with girls comes, at least in part, from a heartache he experienced about a year ago. He met a Swedish girl and started a serious romance. She told him to come to Sweden, and he sold all of his possessions, said goodbye to his family in the Eastern part of Turkey, and was ready to move. But just before he boarded the plane, he called the girl who said, “Don’t come.”

He tells me this story like he tells no one, probably because I’m a stranger. Turkish men have a fair amount of machismo, and walking around with a broken heart can shatter that image. As he told me his story, he would get serious and sad, but if another waiter came by, he’d start laughing and smiling, even though no joke had been told. Since his heartbreak, he’s been working at this job in Istanbul, where he knows no one. He hasn’t talked to his family since the incident. They call, asking him to come see them, but he can’t. He feels he has to work until times are better, but doesn’t know what will make them better.

Here’s a picture of Devrim (on the right) and his fellow waiter Mehmet, posing after doing a dance to a Turkish hit to a girl named Jenny:

And here are some other random images from my trip.

Some men sleeping in their shop in the middle of the day:

A street in the old bazaar lined with lamps:

An young couple taking a break in a courtyard of Topkapi Palace:

And an ancient cemetery, shops built around it, with gorgeous, long headstones covered in detailed calligraphy: