If you read enough philosophy, metaphysics or any other discipline for people with too much free time and no job, you will come across an idea about time and dimensions. Specifically, that all time exists at once. Time as the fourth dimension. However, us humans, being three-dimensional creatures cannot perceive it this way and thus travel linearly through time. If you percolate on this concept long enough, it can become unendingly interesting. Just as the metaphoric two-dimensional Flatlanders can’t see depth, so too can we not see time. Except, as it turns out, in Istanbul.
Walking through this city, this crossroads of civilizations, you can see through the centuries. As you walk through the Grand Bazaar, to the superficial eye you see only knockoff handbags, apple tea and pushy salesmen. The only obvious hints at its age and experience are the tiles on the ceiling and the date on each of its entrances – 1461. However, as you let yourself sink into the place and get lost amongst the aimless corridors time can appear to fold on itself. You can see it not as item on the standard tourist checklist, but as the center of commerce and finance in the known civilized world, 500 years in the past. The obnoxiously ostentatious tour buses that park themselves along every neighboring street, like the Bazaar’s personal city walls, they fade away. Instead, you see them as modern-day camels, donkeys, horses and carriages. You can see the Indian tea leaves, the Persian saffron as they journey to the market, now manifested in the powdered and packaged apple tea. Chinese silk that once traveled across a continent to be traded here, has so too traveled through the centuries to become the soft and ornate scarves sold for a mere five lira.
At Aya Sofya and the Sultanahmet Mosque, the story is the same. Today the area is a mix of tourists who come to to take photos and Muslims who come to pray. However, if you take the time to pause, to breathe in the sticky Bosphorus air, you can see pilgrims. People who risked their lives to come and pray at these magnificent monuments to God. Byzantines and Ottomans stand outside in the courtyards and gardens awaiting the call to prayer or their Sunday sermon. You can feel them. That is, if you take your eye out of the viewfinder.
Everywhere you go in the city, the blue waters of the Bosphorus are not far off. You can feel its breeze and smell its salt. The ferries shuttle businessmen from Europe to Asia and back every twenty minutes. Men defy fate by leaping from the boats across meters of open space just to make their meetings on time. But these are not the only ships. Out of your peripheries, if you choose, you are sure to catch a glimpse of the ghosts. Greek and Romans explored these waters as they filled in the edges of their map. Byzantines used these waters as the trade center of the world. Alongside the steel ferries of today reside these timeless boards, beams and sails, just waiting to be acknowledged.
In 1453, the Byzantines, in a last effort to save their capital and their Empire, strung a chain across the Golden Horn to prevent the approaching Ottoman ships from entering the harbor. Mehmet the Conqueror, one of the greatest Ottoman Sultans, determined to take the city, ordered his ships out of the water. If you look West of Topkapi Palace and North of Sultanamhet, to this day you may see the sails of Mehmet’s navy being rolled across olive-oil soaked timbers into the Golden Horn, sailing across the land and bypassing the Byzantine Empire’s last defense, ushering in the longest lasting of the medieval empires. At least, I see it.
Walking down Istiklal Cadessi (Independence Street) in Taksim you will surely play human pinball as you bounce off the tourists and Turks that pack the street. But, that bustle is a relatively sensation. As you walk by the Flower Passage, the Fish Market and the Alkazar Theatre, over the noise of the crowds you can hear the artists, writers, academics and politicians as they enjoy their first taste of true Independence in the early days of the Turkish Republic.
This city is alive with its own history. It is impossible to miss. Just as each person is a product of their own life’s experience, so too is this city’s character a result of each day in its history. With New Rome, Constantinople, Byzantium, Istanbul, the past is so rich and full that it is tangible. It hangs in the air. You can taste it, touch it and at times even see it as if all its years were layered over one another.
But, seeing the past, that is the easy part. The theory goes that all time exists at once. Past, present and future, as we see it. So, then, what can be seen in the future of this city? What is written in the cobblestones and what can be read on the faces of Istanbul? First, it is not too grand or too broad to say that the future of this city could be a microcosm for the future of the world. Collisions of cultures and people centuries old have forged this city into a global community. After all these years, it is still where East meets West.
Today, our metro ride provided a telling image. A woman in her early twenties, tattooed and pierced with a striking pink streak through her hair was jolted as the train came to a sudden stop and she bumped into the forty-something woman in front of her. The second woman wore a head scarf, long trousers and a trench coat – typical uniform for Istanbul’s devout Islamic women – and both women laughed while joking in Turkish. Only then did we realized they were mother and daughter.
This generation of Turks is not unlike this generation of young Americans. While their parents may have known only their own culture, history and religion, their children have access limitless information. A generation gap like none other in history. Thanks to the internet, no longer do you have to ask “What do I know?” Instead you ask, “how much do I care to find out?”
With that sudden influence of information, money, business and materialism, this city, like America, could be in danger of consuming its way out of its own culture and character. It won’t, though. Like the mother and daughter laughing on the train, the past and future seem to shake each other’s hand here in Istanbul, just to let one another know, “you’re alright by me.”
This city, this world, will find a balance between pay-day and piety. Istanbul has shown me that it is only a matter of when.
