Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  In earlier times, travelers in the Occident were mostly moneyed young men out to sow their wild oats, intent on having a taste of the exotic before settling down into a career, one that was most often prearranged. They had time for themselves. Today, the fact that people live longer and retire at sixty has produced a new generation of adventurers. They have furrowed foreheads, and their hair has turned gray. They are bold, resilient, headstrong, and keen on fulfilling their childhood dreams. Previously, family life, professional obligations, and financial concerns prevented them from actually doing it. Retirement brings freedom.

  The Samsun is an ideal place for meeting people. It is also, in its countless nooks and crannies, a haven of solitude. Lying low, I ponder my impending solo trek. I am fairly familiar with the route I will be taking. As for my muscles, I am on my game. But what am I to do with my mind and thoughts during the long, oh so long journey? In what direction will they go? Should I try to keep them under control or allow myself to be carried along by them? Before my departure for Compostela, I drew up a list of questions to guide my thoughts: Who am I today? How did you turn into the man you’ve now become? Did things go the way you planned? Did you maintain course, or, instead, did you betray your dreams? What were the compromises, which of my aspirations were abandoned during the journey? Which stone should I set in place and on which wall should I set it before the final bow? Taking that daunting mathematical calculation—I subtract my pains, multiply my gains, divide the result by my joys and voilà! there is proof positive that I exist—and then applying it foolishly to questions of an ontological nature was, in any case, one of the last vestiges of that cursed habit of ours to attempt to understand everything in terms of an equation. But Compostela changed me. Although I still have a long way to go before I can hope to close in on true wisdom, I am leaving lighter this time, emptier, more undone.

  Walking stirs us to dream. It is not very compatible with structured thought. The latter is more at home in contemplation, eyes half-closed, the body resting on a soft cushion of fine sand, lounging about in the shade of the pines. Walking is action, momentum, motion. While the body is hard at work, the mind, constantly solicited by imperceptible variations in the landscape—a passing cloud, a gust of wind, puddles on the path, a rustling wheat field, the purple hue of cherries, the fragrance of cut hay or of flowering mimosas—begins to panic, unable to bear the unrelenting work. So thoughts set about foraging and harvesting; reaping images, sensations, and scents, which are then set aside for later on, when, back at the hive, it will be time to sort through them and give them meaning.

  Soothed by the drone of the engines and the gentle to-and-fro of the ship, I could easily doze off, perfectly content. But no, a sense of apprehension suddenly slips in, capitalizing on the empty space that forced inaction has carved out within me. Inevitably, instead of daydreaming, my mind pores over the catalog of a thousand questions to which, just maybe, I will find answers along the way. Will I, by journey’s end, come to know the source of the force compelling me to head out all alone, for three or four months at a time, into the unknown? Although I more or less know why I choose to walk, I have no idea why I choose to get lost while there are so many marked, well-known, and risk-free trails out there, anywhere from the Alps to my own backyard in Normandy. What if this is just some comical attempt to relive my long-lost youth? If my body fails me, I’ll have an answer to that question, at least. The mind may go along with a lie for a while, but it’s much harder for the muscles.

  And the solitude that lies ahead, will I manage to defeat its dark valleys and keep its pleasures under control? And above all, will I be able to make the most of it? For this solitude is not the result of fleeing something; I am choosing it freely. It is the blank slate on which I plan to write the next chapter. A garden where I will plant thoughts like flowers—some will be soft as silk and others thorny to the touch—and they will only fully bloom when I return home.

  But who says that I will return? I am not so naive as to embark on this adventure without at least giving some thought to my death. Until quite recently, it was enough to simply imagine that one day I might die. Today, I know that I will. Will death allow me to see this journey through? I know that many dangers lie in wait: sickness, accidents, violence. In groups, people support one another, help one another, comfort one another, carry one another. There is room for error, or a momentary weakness. Malfunctions are relative, temporary. For the solo traveler, however, second chances are rare.

  Whether I am sitting in a dark corner of one of the bars, standing at the edge of the ship, my elbows resting on the railing, or looking out to sea seated beside an airshaft on the forecastle of the Samsun, these are some of the vague worries that take hold of me, and I do nothing to stop them. I know that as soon as I take my first step out onto the road, they will let go, waiting for a more favorable opportunity to grab hold of me once again later on. And when my little bout of blues, so characteristic of these eves before battle, starts to seem too much, I go rambling around the ship’s passageways and decks for a few new encounters or to rejoin familiar faces.

  As night falls, we—the four gray-haired French adventurers—are standing in a row with our noses in the air, gazing up to admire the spectacle of the ship’s passage through the extraordinary Corinth Canal. Its steep walls and narrow channel have drawn everyone out on deck. The ship’s Turkish passengers have already settled back into the habits of home. Conversations resound, teacups parade back and forth. There is little or no alcohol. Those with a taste for strong drink retreat into the two small bars tucked away in the vessel’s side. Alcohol is easier to savor in the scant light seeping in through the portholes.

  I am one of the very few foot passengers. All the others, whether alone or in family groups, have brought their car with them onto the Samsun. I talk for a long time with a Turko-Swiss couple going on vacation in the husband’s hometown. He’s a retired engineer who, after attending a Swiss institute of technology as a young man, spent his entire career disfiguring French-speaking Switzerland with roads and bridges. But since childhood, he has had a strong attachment to his hometown. Though the couple resides in Switzerland, he doesn’t let a year go by, not a single summer, without making the trip home.

  Yarup, a young businessman who, with his family, started a clothing business in the suburbs of Paris, is taking his car back home for good. With so much competition in France, he decided to rebuild the company’s workshops in Turkey—in his hometown, of course. “For just one person’s salary in France, I can pay ten workers in Turkey,” he explains. He will fly back to Paris for work and to visit his family who has settled down . . . in housing that recreates the feel of a village. In order to stay together, all the brothers and cousins bought apartments in a single building, which they now own from the basement to the rafters.

  In İzmir, Yvon, Éric, Louis, and I wish one another the best of luck. That very evening, I board a bus that drops me off early the next morning in Taksim Square, Istanbul’s business district. I make a quick stop in the Turkish bank where I had opened an account while still in Paris. When I walk in, the women at the counter elbow one another, chuckling. They’ve all heard about the slightly madcap Frenchman planning to hike the Silk Road. The risk of being mugged is real. To be on the safe side, I want to avoid carrying large sums. They provide me with a plastic debit card so that, in larger cities, I can use teller machines to withdraw Turkish liras. Can (pronounced like the English John), the bank’s manager, and Mehmet, his assistant, both speak my native language, which they learned in Istanbul’s écoles françaises. Though they are astonished at my endeavor, they are mostly worried. “You are going to need a lot of luck,” Can tells me, shaking my hand as I head out. Words I will often think back on along the way.

  I walk across the square and go to have my passport stamped at the French Consulate, just around the corner. If something nasty happens to me, a threat I take seriously, at least the French authorities in Turkey will know who I
am and what I was doing. I do not know if it’s the classic pusillanimity often attributed to government employees in their cushy, well-guarded offices, or because they’ve been conditioned by the line of business they’re in, but the consulate’s employees do not mince words in warning me of potential catastrophe. They tell me there’s danger everywhere. According to them, the only hospitable places are along the coast in Turkey’s south popular with tourists, or Cappadocia. And they list off, one by one, all the risks I may face: Turkish drivers, who pose a real threat to pedestrians, as well as thieves, snipers belonging to the PKK party (the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers’ Party), and of course Kangals, the fearsome shepherd dogs of eastern Turkey. Were I to take these warnings seriously, I would immediately reboard the Samsun and go back the way I came. The only risk a tourist runs in Venice is having to pay too much for a cappuccino.

  This is my second trip to Istanbul. Earlier this year, I did some research on the Silk Road and met Stéphane Yerasimos, director of the Center for Anatolian Studies. He compiled, annotated, and prefaced reeditions of several works on the Silk Road, most notably The Description of the World by Marco Polo* and The Voyages of Ibn Battuta.† He also edited the two volumes of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s memoirs.‡ Tavernier, a seventeenth-century French trader in precious gems, kept a meticulously detailed journal of his travels through Turkey and Persia. And he took scrupulous notes on the cities and the caravansaries in which he stayed. I will be following, from here to Erzurum, one of his best-chronicled caravan routes. That road, a major thoroughfare for commerce with the Orient, led straight east out of Istanbul and all the way to Armenia, via Erzurum, then turned directly south to Tabriz, in Persia. From there, one branch continued on to Baghdad. The other, skirting the south shore of the Caspian Sea, headed up toward Bukhara, Samarkand, and China. That’s the section that I plan to hike next year.

  Before my grand departure, I’ve given myself twenty-four hours. Is it to get a good a running start, or simply to tour the city? I don’t really know. Today, Istanbul is an immense metropolis of 13 million people. It’s the economic and cultural capital of the country, having begrudgingly relinquished the leading role in the political sphere to Ankara. It is still, however, the most European of Turkish cities. In these first few days of May, the city’s weather is mild but wet. I have lunch at the Lades, a restaurant in the Beyoğlu (bay’-oh-lu) district, directly across from the small mosque of Galatasaray. I rehearse what will be the case all along the way: it’s always a good idea to first do a quick tour of the kitchen to check for any questionable cooks. There’s no need to speak Turkish or to know the names of the dishes. I simply point with my famished index finger to a variety of hot and cold meze, which I always enjoy, as well as some eggplant, looking perfectly slow-cooked, another one of my favorites. By the time I take a seat, my food is ready. Turkish chefs, whose cuisine often includes ragout dishes (etli sebze, literally, “vegetables with meat”), are true masters at combining culinary excellence with lightning-fast service.

  After lunch, I stroll through the old city. I need to finish breaking in my new hiking boots, which I must have so far only hiked in for at most three hundred kilometers. At the consulate, a secretary warns me about elusive young individuals, fluent in French, who often target tourists traveling alone. They come up to them, in the street or on public transportation, wearing a friendly face. They then offer their victim a drink or pastry laced with some drug. The victim immediately falls asleep, only to wake up later on stripped of all his or her belongings. The “spiked drink” technique is not new. It was often used by bandits to steal from merchants on the Silk Road. The drink was usually laced with tarantula venom, and the merchants never woke up.

  In the small streets behind the bazaar, a poor neighborhood where people live in unhygienic conditions, I run little risk of encountering tourists or those who seek to steal from them. I see that some of the old wooden Ottoman-style houses are finally being restored, and none too soon. Until now, the focus has been on monuments only—such as the Topkapı Palace*—and religious buildings. To be sure, Istanbul—or Constantinople, to be exact—did not have a monopoly on the Road and was never but one link in the chain. It was a kind of storehouse with an adjoining tollbooth. On the other hand, Byzantium had political control of all the Mediterranean cities, from Antioch to Alexandria, and each city was a departure point for its own caravan trail. There was not just one, but many Silk routes.

  I also have a little time to spend with my friends: Dilara and Rabia, two young women who studied in Istanbul’s écoles françaises and who roll their r’s delightfully when speaking French; and Max, a musician from Paris who came to Istanbul to study, as well as to learn how to play Eastern musical instruments, in particular the Saz. Having lived here for two years, he finds it hard to imagine ever returning to France. The four of us enjoy a wonderful dinner together that feels to me a little like a veillée d’armes: a final evening of camaraderie before I dive head-first into my adventure and the solitude of the long-distance walker. We talk about everything other than my trip. With my departure imminent, the die is cast, and so I’m thankful that my friends choose to talk about something else. Particularly since Rabia informs us that she is going to be married to Rémi, a Frenchman who moved to Istanbul for work. If they decide to tie the knot quickly, I won’t be able to make the wedding.

  On the night of May 13 to 14, I sleep very little and rather poorly. I have no need for an alarm clock; I jump out of bed early that morning all on my own. The sun has only begun to rise over the Bosporus and the Golden Horn as I hurry out, pack on my back, into Istanbul’s still-deserted streets. I scurry down the steep thoroughfare linking the İstiklal—the Champs-Élysées of Istanbul—to the port. Along the way, I salute the ancient Galata Tower overlooking the famous bay. And in no time at all, I’m standing on the pier, ready to cross the Bosporus strait, going from Turkey’s European shore to its Asian shore. When I step off the ship, I will be in Asia and at the zero-kilometer mark of my journey. With just under three thousand to go to reach Tehran.

  * Translator’s note (TN): in 1974.

  * Marco Polo, Le Devisement du monde, Paris: La Découverte, 1998.

  † Ibn Battuta, Voyages, 3 volumes, Introduction and notes by Stéphane Yerasimos, Paris: Maspero, 1982.

  ‡ Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Six voyages en Turquie et en Perse (Six Voyages in Turkey and in Persia), Paris: Maspero, 1981.

  * The Turkish and Latin alphabets are very similar. There are, nevertheless, several differences that make Turkish somewhat difficult to transcribe in English, most importantly the dotless i—ı—pronounced like the English schwa (such as the a in about), but with the mouth slightly opened and top and bottom teeth closed. Although one often sees the word spelled Topkapi in English, the Turkish pronunciation of the final letter is different, closer to Tohp’-kah-puh, and is spelled Topkapı. The letter ö is also similar to the English schwa, although it is pronounced with rounded lips. Other tricky transcriptions include: Turkish c is pronounced dj, the ç like ch and cedilla-s, ş, is pronounced sh. Should I transcribe the name of my banker in Turkish as Can, or phonetically, as John? TN: In this English edition, Turkish spellings have been used unless there is a common English equivalent. An approximation of Turkish pronunciation has been provided if it differs considerably from what an English speaker might expect. Tonic accents, if unusual with respect to English, are indicated by an apostrophe following the stressed syllable.

  CHAPTER II

  THE PHILOSOPHICAL WOODSMAN

  The Suhadyne, a small ferry linking the two banks of the Bosporus, scoots away from the European shore and quickly heads out amid a flotilla of fishing boats. At this hour of the morning, there are only a few passengers. One portly fellow avails himself of the ten-minute crossing to catch a few more z’s, his head comfortably propped up by his triple chin. The sun is struggling to break through the mist. On the European side receding into the distance, only a few islands of greenery hav
e survived the unbridled urbanization busily attacking the city from all sides. The novelist Pierre Loti, who was madly in love with Istanbul at a time when it was known simply as “Stamboul,” would probably not appreciate the modern metropolis it has become.

  Above us, on the immense suspension bridge linking the two continents, cars and trucks process back and forth like ants to and from an anthill. The bridge is off-limits to pedestrians, so if you want to get from Europe to Asia, you have to get your feet wet. The official explanation is that too many hopeless souls have climbed the bridge’s parapet and jumped off into the Bosporus. In reality, it is because the army, which has guardhouses at both ends of the bridge, is worried that the Kurds might try to sabotage one of the premier symbols of Turkish modernity.

  The mosques on the opposite bank, along with the sumptuous Topkapı Palace, have vanished into the mist by the time the ferry lands in Üshküdar. The neighborhood is one gigantic bus depot. This is a simple continuation: it has always been a travelers’ district. In fact, from time immemorial until the early twentieth century, Üshküdar was the gathering place for caravans traveling to Central Asia. When the convoy’s leader determined that enough merchants and animals had arrived to ensure that profits would be worth his efforts and that the convoy would be safe—in general between eight hundred and one thousand animals and one hundred individuals or so—he would give the go-ahead, and the caravan would depart.