while the city sleeps

There's something beautiful about a Sunday morning. Sunday mornings are the one time during the week when, in the majority of places I've visited and lived, the city takes a deep breath and doesn't feel rushed to release it. Car horns are silenced, music is softened, and the crowds of people normally found rushing through the streets are abated. The rule is that Sundays are peace; Sundays are quiet. Istanbul doesn't stray from this rule.

It rained this Sunday morning, but it was unlike the rain experienced in the Northeastern part of the United States. The rain dropped almost soundlessly while the sun was shining just beyond the clouds into the Bosphorus Straits. As a cloud would pass, there would be a period of sunshine, and then another cloud would come with the same soundless falling apart. Off and on throughout the morning.

Hopeful that this weather pattern in combination with the day of the week might teach me something the normal pattern of the city might not expose, I took to the streets to experience the shell of my neighborhood. This is what I learned: Istanbul is intentionally and unintentionally layered. Streets are constructed where roads once where, where paths once were, but still lead you to the local grocery, nonetheless. Buildings of stucco and brick are crammed together on the same plots of land where structures of stone and earth once stood (still might stand) and these buildings house the bank clerk, the taxi driver, and the professors at this university. These are layers that are unintentionally complex, but yet intentionally simple.

I learned this morning, as I walked down Cengiz Topel Caddesi, that no matter how many layers a city has, they all serve the same purpose. We have created these centers to interact with each other, be it for economic means, to exchange ideas, or just to chew the grass. This is what I learned this rainy, Sunday morning. Istanbul isn't, but could be home.

Fish market in Kabatas

Clothing 'store' in Kabatas

Hello Kitty

Homeless man