I knew early on that my trip to Turkey, and specifically in Istanbul, would have changed anything. I knew I was going to get in front of the door to the east and going beyond just would not be back with some souvenirs from the Grand Bazaar and a few more nice photos to show to friends. I did not know what, specifically, I would find. I do not know even now, or maybe yes, maybe write it and let's see what happens. The beginning
Istanbul Istanbul
the decadent, the mirror that reflects in the splendors of ancient kingdoms Romano Eastern, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, had the power, strange and sneaky, to turn back the clock of memory, a slide pictures of travels and experiences in the past to a new tape filled with unpublished comments overlay.
Istanbul sleeping peacefully on the waters of the Bosphorus, the Marmara and the Golden Horn is a city of little things where I rediscovered the old rites in its streets filled with people, dogs, cats and things for sale. I met my old tales of the city, Cremona, while sitting at a bar, a street vendor offered us pistachios bringing to mind the stories of my grandmother who recalled the seller of lupines, and Fixed visitor welcome, of the taverns of the past. They rebounded in the annals of the Austro-Hungarian trade show sadness that I smelled in Vienna and anticipate the availability of the Ottoman Sultans memory of an empire, suddenly disappeared, left on earth as intense as melancholy reminders of a glorious time that was and ever more return. I've heard up the blind fury of the music when on a road near Beyoglu I heard the sound I was approached there motionless with his back against a tree thinking back to when I hear the sound of the trumpet with a mute and my hair stands on end all arms and chills me run as mild shock to the skin. Every sidewalk, every bar, every corner, every house had a door that opened into a room memory in the bottom of which you could find another door which opened into another open room which gave access to yet another in an endless game memories, mirrors, emotions.
understand that the city is not just made of houses, roads, people and objects, but has a soul, hidden like flame beneath ashes. Istanbul can seem suspended in time so elegant, sleepy, proud and sad but it is a lens through which to look.
So while mix the sugar cube you've slipped into the glass tea in a cafe overlooking the Golden Horn, while watching the gestures, rhythmic and symmetrical, prayer in the mosque, while purchase the cob toasted by the vendor on the street, while watching the fishermen crossing the Galata Bridge on a crowded tram understand the beauty of small things and Istanbul reminds you that you live in small things is when you're at home or while traveling.
places and people
places or streets, squares and palaces, especially in Istanbul, in Turkey but in general, are critical because they are meeting places, both famous and unknown alike. Nothing is as far west as the desire to find the street or on a boat in a
restaurant or a shop to talk, explain and tell qualasiasi time of day or night. I have seen hundreds or perhaps thousands of people sitting on little stools in groups of two, three or four on the roadside while discussions were keen unknown to me drinking tea or playing the Tavla. It may seem very lazy eyes European Opera is actually a different way of understanding the social and free time. We Europeans tend to stay at home, the turkish no, still loves the outdoors and the chat's sake. And then the places are filled, but I say filled, crowd of people and assume a new dimension, a new value. The squares less successful in terms of artistic crowd of people, animals, objects, smells, noises and become monuments to the sociability deserve a photograph and a bit 'of our time as much as the Topkapi Palace or Hagia Sophia or the Blue Mosque and Suleymaniye. Religiosity
guess that writing, not bad, the Muslim religion in this period of bogeymen and witches do not delight to most but the thing leaves me quite indifferent, and then write it. I entered the first flies of my life, the Blue Mosque, very touristy I must stress, even for completely light-hearted atmosphere relaxed enough around. Tourists with clothes, cameras and digital cameras, cell phones and backpacks are always working but no swarming faithful seemed to care while he washed his hands, face, neck and feet at the fountain outside the entrance. I thought how far away was the idea of \u200b\u200bIslam, telling us saccenza concerned with the various lords of the media or otherwise exist, as far as I want to say, different types of Islam and I had before my eyes that breeze. But these poisonous thoughts, now that I crept into my head is so sensitive to the controversy, have disappeared as I watched the prayer. The rhythmic movements, concentration el'imperturbabilità despite the subdued voices of the tourists, the noises of children, free to run and roll around on the carpet, and the constant flash of cameras,
showed a much more religious sensitivity deeply rooted in our western world. I say this with detached amazement as atheist, but I think the Muslim has so disturbing aspects, such as the status of women and fundamentalism, as fascinating, or spiritual tension that is felt in many practitioners. How far our churches that now seem empty, visited only by tourists and some old lady that the rosary beads of remembering their dead or faithful some occasional light a candle at the statue of a small round asking pardon for the child or for the sick wife. The Muslims seemed to me more and we believe that the tensions that exist between the Abrahamic religions interpret the most religiously and politically, on the contrary, as we do. We treat religion as a tradition to defend, rather than a true belief to follow, our culture profoundly different from the Middle East and will not serve for nothing that conservative campaigns across Europe. The spirituality that we have lost, and in all honesty I do not regret, was born from our hearts and no outsider will ever report it compulsively. They simply have it yet and we do not have one anymore. To us, to me, all that remains is to observe their prayers, not so much the more ecstatic religion per se, but on how to interpret it. History
History in Turkey is the dust that flows on the roads, all we have known and studied went from here and leave a trail. Peoples and Religions have trod this land, and the Turks do not seem to cure it. It is not indifference or ignorance: the mosques, the palaces of Ottomans, the Orthodox churches, the ruins of Troy, the battlefields of World War I, the Greco-Roman city Ephesus, Pergamum and Hyerapolis, the Byzantine walls, synagogues seem to Turks and everyday objects will retain the same attention that we reserve the objects that we keep on the dresser at home. There is no sensationalism it indifference, just disillusioned and fatalistic detachment. Any writer would use the word melancholy.
Conclusion
Who or What is Istanbul? Who or What is Turkey? I do not know. For me it is still a mystery after all these lines to write and write about emotions rather than places. But maybe, if you must be forced to put a final and I write everything that you grant a license to write corny platitudes, I can say is that both are ports on the Orient but also about ourselves, as I said. Doors leading to other ports, we find the key that is opening one by one.
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