There are many antique shops in my neighborhood. Lots of middle-aged middle-class couples from Northern Europe and the US; not so bored husbands. Lots of small coffee shops, with façades and interiors like those my Western friends like to photograph. My favourite restaurant only 30 meters away; the menu is oral, for 13 liras I get the most delicious chicken with coriander ever, and much more. Orhan Pamuk and the Museum of Innocence. Lots of fashionable people. Beards and strong calves. A terrace with a view on Hagia Sophia, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque and Gülhane Park. I have figured out where I can buy bread in the morning and fruit at night, where the closest tantuni place is, where I can get sunscreen (it is around 30°C every day, and I discovered I have sun allergy). Börek with meat; somebody said it is very Turkish to eat it at your front door in the morning. I have a doorman; he is always there somewhere, but I never see him. A local guy (probably a drug addict) who asks foreigners for one lira and when they say they don’t have it accuses them of trying to trick on him. A transsexual bar next street. The loud music from the street that up to three million people pass every day occupies my room at nights, but when I go out there is more or less peace and quiet. Every day at around 11 AM and 11 PM a pss-pss-pss: a woman whose window opposites mine calls a cat. Construction workers interacting loudly, even now, at midnight. Phones ringing on the street; I often mistake them for a doorbell. Laughters and quarrels. A guy singing a melancholic song in vibrato. Three days ago, not far away, I saw a sheep on a small side street.
July 2014