Afternoon Chat
Istanbul, Turkey. A street scene in the old city.
Another old slide from 20 years ago. The women are enjoying their afternoon chat. They had washed their rugs in the street by their house, scrubbing them with soapy water and throwing buckets of water on them to rinse them. Cars would pass by and drive right over the freshly scrubbed carpets but the woman were used to that. That struck me as odd. I’d consider my rug dirty if a car drove over it. But it did squeeze some of the water out. So, O.K.
I love to wander through the streets of strange cities looking for vignettes of life that strike a chord. Istanbul is the perfect place to do this. On one early morning walk, I passed a Turkish man who followed me for a few steps hissing at me through his teeth. I had no idea what he was doing. Later I found out that this was the equivalent of a wolf-whistle. (I was much younger then, twenty years makes a difference, and he was not so young himself.)
I’m glad I visited Istanbul before they tarted up the Grand Bazaar. It used to be like the Aleppo bazaar, all groined arches and cave like shops with the dirt of the ages clinging to the ceilings. Lovely. Nowadays it looks like a mall in any American city. Where is the atmosphere? Where is Constantinople?