The kids are thinking about Stamboul, as have Patrick and I. I’m encouraging them to journal about what they’re thinking, what they’re afraid of, what they hope to see, smell, eat, and hear. L is enamored with the idea of the luxurious bath, the hammam, D is worried about making mistakes and inadvertently offending someone.
Patrick surprised me with some travel books this week, and I’m working my way through them. They are food and history, long walks and a couple of Pamuk novels. And one includes an excerpt of John Feeley’s Stamboul Sketches, which is so evocative and beautifully written I’ve been reading passages out loud to P.
Istanbul is best seen from a seat by a tavern window in the Passage of Flowers, froth-crowned Argentine in hand. The city is at heart nothing more than the sum of its citizens, and most of these will eventually stroll by your window or sit next to you, drinking from an Argentine themselves. You will get to know the Stamboullus in this way, and later you can visit them in the monuments they inhabit. This is the Levantine approach to sightseeing, a distinct improvement on the Guide Bleu.
One thing I find compelling in his writing is his intense focus on local faces and street scenes to paint a picture of life in this enormous, diverse, and ancient city.
Still life with cat, yarn and travel book.
Istanbul, I read in other passages, is awash in feral cats, which brings to mind our honeymoon in Rome, where we snuck triangles of soft cheese from our hotel breakfast plates and fed them to the cats who inhabit the ruins of the temple of the Vestal Virgins. I spent some happy hours there, feeding the cats and sketching for a few watercolor paintings. I read that our pensione in Stamboul has at least two resident cats; I look forward to meeting them.
Meanwhile, I am home planning the trip and thinking (of course) of knitting projects to bring on my journey. Reading through the Turkish Cultural Foundation’s website I of course light on Turkish knitted stockings, where I discover to my delight that Anna Zilboorg (whose book Marvelous Mittens is a deep well of inspiration) has written a book on them, called Fancy Feet. I do believe a trip to the library is in order.
Of course, this means Anna has herself been to Turkey, and now I want to go drink tea with her and knit and talk about Turkish textiles. For now, her book will have to do.
