New Year's on Grand'rue de Péra, now Istiklal...

"Businesses, theatres and cafés spread along the Grand'rue de Péra (today Istiklal Caddesi) which in 1900 became a meeting place for affluent non-Muslim Ottomans, visiting Europeans and increasingly also for members of the Muslim upper class. Most of the latter were men, but some theatres also had boxes enclosed by lattice-work for women theatre-goers, or put on performances for exclusively female audiences. Many milliners also established themselves along the same street, and by the end of the nineteenth century visits to their shops had become a part of the everyday life of Ottoman ladies." (from Faroqhi's Subjects of the Sultan; Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire. (London, New York: I.B. Taurus), 2005. p. 256.

"When we were seventy-three, we'd go up to Beyoglu together on a winter's day. We'd buy each other presents with the money we'd been saving: a sweater or a pair of gloves. We'd be wearing our heavy old overcoats that smelled like us and which we'd come to like. We'd be window-shopping absentmindedly without looking for anything in particular, talking to each other. We'd be swearing hatefully, complaining about things that kept changing, talking idly abut how clothes, store windows, and people used to be so much better and nicer in the old days. While we went through the rigamarole, we'd be conscious that we behaved like this because we were too old to expect much from the future, but we still would carry on without changing any of our behavior. We'd buy a few packages of marrons glacées making sure they were weighed and packaged right. Then somewhere in the backstreets of Beyoglu we'd come across an old bookstore which we'd never seen before.... I had a hunch that Rüya would come to love me when we were seventy-three when she was in no condition to yearn for different lives. Whereas Istanbul, as my readers have noticed, would keep on living in its misery." Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book