Through new eyes--letter from the returnéd D.

Have finally got to a computer- at the UD library. A beautiful cool, dry, spring day here, the air reminding me of the air up in the hills at the village of Sirenge; [Şirince], only my ears don't pop to get here & there are no orange trees blossoming & bearing fruit, with or without goats tethered to them.

I keep seeing people I know & I try to say to them, with as little swank as possible, that I've just got back from Istanbul. & as I try to summarize my journey & all its experiences into a few sentences, I find I am feeling the rush through me of whole days, the boat ride out to the second smaller of the Prince's Islands; the hours of wandering through the Sultanahmet area, waving away the hustling guides: my friend, my friend, where did you get your hat? It is a very unique hat; the ordinary repeated actions & sights, trudging uphill & pausing for breath, but also stopping to watch the children play in the narrow street or women spreading out on a flat roof the innards of matresses or the solitary old men sitting curled up on little chairs close to the buildings, staring at ?, as still as statues & no movement around them except for the smoke curling around their faces or the young aproned waiters rushing down the street balancing trays of the little tulip glasses of çay...

& since I can't say all this, I say: I feel as if I have been taken out of myself, such a different world, so many contrasts, contradictions, richness & shabbiness, loving attention to details like public flower plantings & bags of garbage tossed into street corners, the politeness, the formality of the people, the public affection among families & between friends... & if people's eyes don't glaze open I may go on with a little story, hearing the last call to prayer from your balcony window & feeling as if I were standing in rolling tides of words, the magic of that experience & then the old woman, the retired school teacher in Selcuk, who gave us tea & directions & who sat under a big poster of Kemal Ataturk & said to me when I spoke of the magic of the last call to prayer- good magic or bad magic?

So now I have the train horns sounding in the quiet of the night, each one a different note. No problem returning despite my anxiety about something going wrong. I didn't even have to take off my boots once.

Hope you have got your new refrigerator & that your phone interview went well.

I am now going to trot back up the green & now empty Mall. Such a relief to be able to walk in something else besides my 7 league boots. When I first stepped down the stairs in shoes, I felt like winged Hermes.

By the way, is it possible to get an attachment from Kodak of all the photos you took? It would be wonderful to have something esle besides postcards to look at.

D.

Comments

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