In old Istanbul

First meetings
In the Blue Mosque, overwhelmed by the vastness, the low hanging-many-candled chandeliers and the peacock-turquoise-immaculately-cleaned-oriental carpet, I stop to lean on the wooden barrier past which infidels are forbidden. Bare-footed and shrouded in a selection of the un-coordinated body-covering cloths designed for tourists, I am surprised to be engaged in conversation by a man in his sixties who I had failed to notice amongst the grandeur.

Do you like it?
It’s amazing.
How many times have you been here? Three? Four? Five?
It’s my first time.
Your first time?!!!!!!
Yes. I’m sorry.
You should’ve come twenty years ago.
Why?
We would’ve been twenty years younger then.
Yes, of course.

A small beautifully-formed boy….perhaps a professional model….dressed in the pristine white and fur-trimmed garb of a goblin sultan, poses for a million photographs with people he has never seen before; nor will he ever see again. He sits. He stands. He kneels. He does whatever the American women want him to do. There is something vaguely unsettling. I wonder whether he is sold in the sultry Turkish night to do whatever men want him to do. He never smiles.

This is my son. He has been here before.
Yes. The young know what to do. They travel.

Medication
Walking across the city, there seems neither sense nor direction to the traffic. Horns sound incessantly and pointlessly. Most vehicles are at a standstill. Every time we stop to point out our potential destination on our meaningless map to some hopefully-helpful local, the answer is always the same: 200 metres. Aiming for the Spice Bazaar, we mistake the venue and wander into the gloom of a number of stalls and shops which are clearly not aimed at European travellers; the so-called civilised beings in this ancient cradle of civilisation. Here are boxes and crates packed to the brim with ducklings, kittens, puppies, baby rabbits and veritable flocks of unknown, small-and-colourful crushed birds. We peer into the darkness of an open door where four men are crouched on the ground eating their bread and tomatoes from a cloth under which a million chicks vie for air and attention.

A young woman stops to choose a leech from one of many large jars containing every moving size and shape you could want. If you did want. She points out the offending ailment, apparently just below her right knee, to the leech doctor. The medical man, for, according to the hand-written sign, he is the doctor/professor, is in his early twenties and sports blue jeans and a luminous green tee-shirt but no sign of a stethoscope. He plunges his naked hand into the squirming-shrinking-expanding blackness of the jar and expertly withdraws an appropriately-sized leech, knocking away the others that are clinging to his wrist. He pops the creature into a half-full bottle of water. Yesterday, Jack mentioned that we should always check that the seals on our water bottles are not broken.

Mistakes in the heat
Sitting on the roof-top terrace in 30C with the mad-dogs-and-Englishmen who are watching football through the window, an unannounced waiter brings a small dish containing something bright orange and wet. It bears a passing resemblance to the stringy cheese which was on offer at breakfast this morning. I break off a small corner and put it in my mouth. It tastes as awful as a piece of soggy serviette might. This, in fact, is because it is a soggy serviette which has been kindly delivered for me to cool myself with. Well, I’m almost sure that’s what it is, but now that bits of it are clinging to my forehead and neck which I’ve just wiped I’m having doubts. When I rendezvous with the man-child, he asks:
What’s all that orange stuff in your hair?

Shopping
Jack has been to Kapili Carsi before so should know better than to become involved with an expert carpet salesman. Finally realising that taking even the smallest of rugs on a plane is a non-starter and having exhausted all his flying carpet jokes, Mustapha Sale persuades Jack to make a strange purchase: a leather cover for a pouffe. We don’t own a pouffe. The following day, in the Spice Bazaar, my son makes the accompanying purchase. Not a bag of stuffing, but a bright blue hubble-bubble pipe with some allegedly apple flavoured tobacco. I dream of the man-child sitting on his un-stuffed pouffe in Swansea, high on the hubble-bubble. Dressed in his Scheherezade outfit, he regales an enchanted female stick-insect with tales of the Arabian nights.

Interlude
Sitting in a small side-street in this city of 1001 cats, we could be in many places. The south of France for example; specifically, Nyons. From the windows of the imposing four-storey-sunflower-yellow-painted-colonial-type-open-shuttered building to our right drift the cool sounds of all-that-jazz. Suddenly, we are brought back to semi-reality by the onset of the call to prayer that resounds from every ancient wall. A plate of tenderly reared lamb, marinated since time immemorial and cooked to perfection with sweet black plums arrives. It’s an old Ottoman recipe and because it didn’t say this on the menu and the menu was the only one in Istanbul without pictures, I am inclined to believe this new piece of information. It may possibly be one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten.

Weird and wonderful
Around 120 of us have managed to find our way to the cultural centre which seems to have been deliberately located in the most obscure point possible. We tried asking several people along the way for directions including two police officers. None had the faintest idea where it might be but all thought it was about 200 metres. Finally, I ask a man who is slicing meat from a dead leg kebab pole. First right, first left says he. And so it was and ever shall be. We have come to see the whirling dervishes. There is no sign of them and I ask the man-child whether they might be whirling so quickly that we can’t see them. Five men and a woman, wearing hats tall enough to cover Marge Simpson’s hair, commence the world’s longest song: 15 minutes of drumming, chanting and flute playing. From behind the red curtains come five more beings. They, too, have the Simpson hats plus long black cloaks wrapped around floor-length white robes. About 10 minutes of bowing takes place and I have the strange feeling that I’m at some cartoon graduation ceremony. Suddenly, they start to turn. Arms outstretched, right palm open to receive the messages from above, left palm down to pass the messages to the world, they spin and spin and spin. They stop without a trace of dizziness in evidence and bow gracefully to each other. Then they are off again: turning and whirling, faster and faster until they are five spinning tops of which only the odd flash is caught by the untrained eye. It is mesmerising and is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. They stop and an elderly man from the group of musicians recites at length and from memory from the Koran. It’s over. The dervishes have left the building.