The Cats of Istanbul

Oh, to be a cat in Istanbul….

I’ve never been anywhere where the street animals were so healthy-looking and tolerated.  Once you get to the main square here in Sultanahmet, you will see one of three dogs who seem to have claimed the space for their own.  They are a bit skinny, but they doze on the sidewalks and stairs in cool shadows while people automatically adjust their courses so as not to disturb them.

It’s the cats, however, that have their bluff in.  I can look out my hotel window at any given moment and see at least one cat.  There are brown tabbys and orange ones.  There are mostly white cats and calicos.  I even saw a big black fluffy one trailing a majestic plume of a tail the other day.

It is an act of Muslim charity to take care of these homeless animals.  I have often seen people putting cat food out for them.  Yesterday, a guy from a restaurant stepped out and fed a whole pan of sausage to a large group of cats.  They pawed at and fought over the largesse.

In addition to the food, cats also get to go pretty much wherever they want.  I just passed one on my way into the hotel who had curled up in a soft sunny chair in the outside dining area.  A young orange tabby that reminded me a tremendous amount of my Mom and Dad’s cat Cheeze was roaming around the tombstones in the Suliyemanye area this morning.  They are ubiquitous.

The best example of the affection for cats here in Istanbul can be seen in the Obama cat.  When the President visited here, a cat somehow came in with him as he visited the Ayasofya.  Since he is so high profile and since he won his re-election not long after that, the idea arose that this was a lucky cat.  He now has a home and food and all the petting and paparazzi he can take.

Of course, these sleek kittehs only increase my longing to my own babies back home.  I’m glad to give these street cats the love I cannot give to my own pets at the present.  I think everybody wins.

Musical Healing

After a late breakfast, we packed up our bags one last time and headed out for our last day "on the road."  We started out at the Sultan II. Beyazid Kulliyesi ve Saglik Muzesi.  This complex, built by the Sultan Beyazid II, was designed to be a teaching hospital.  I didn't know quite what to expect out of a hospital museum.  It turned out to be fascinating for a number of reasons.

The first thing I noticed was the beauty of the surroundings.  All the buildings were of a pale cream stone that glowed in the morning light.  Gardens of roses and lavender scented the cool air.  The only sounds were birdsong, falling water from two fountains, and soft simple music.

The former hospital now has lifesize dummies posed in diorama that depict what day-to-day life was like there during the Ottoman Empire.  I am usually not a fan of mannequins, but these were well-done.  They detailed the types of treatments one could receive at the complex as well as what the various people - patients, physicians, student doctors - had and did.

So many of the things they were doing then are things we've only just now started to experiment with in the West.  Cataract surgery was already being performed in the Middle Ages as were C-section births and other things we didn't adopt until much later.  In a time when most of the people with mental health issues were being locked away and treated like wayward animals, the Ottomans sought a cure and dignity for each.  Why did it take the West so long to catch up to these ideas?

The thing I found most interesting was the concept of musical healing. One of their major forms of treatment for physical and psychological disorders both was exposure to different kinds of music.  At all times, the fountain kept beautiful sound echoing off the in-patient housing wing.  Patients would attend performances of all the different types of music depending on what they needed to help with their specific issues.  See the picture below for a description of what each type did and for whom.

There is a logic to this.  Think about how many times we use music casually to lift ourselves out of a bad mood.  Think about the research done on the possibility for damage or even death caused by excessive exposure to loud, low bass.  We even had the cliche about music soothing the savage soul.  Everything around us seems to be telling us that this is a good idea.  It's just taken us about 400 years to get back to it in our part of the world.

I bought two CDs, one of Rast and one of Rehavi.  The Rast, supposedly good for scholars, is something to try in my classroom.  I personally am going to try the Rehavi next time I get a migraine.  Who knows whether it will work or not?  I have tried everything else under the sun, including some medicines that have made me very, very ill in their own right.  Maybe it's time I took a leaf from the Ottoman Physician Desk Reference and let something I already enjoy become something that can heal me.

Gallipoli

Today was the kind of sunny day you always see in films.  The sky was bright blue and utterly cloudless.  Our trusty white bus slid with surprising and almost naval grace along curving roads.  Along the way, fields of golden sunflowers stretched into the distance.

We were headed for the battlefields of Gallipoli, site of the attempted invasion by England and France, site of Ataturk’s great battle success.  We’d been on the bus for hours getting here, and to be honest, I didn’t know what to expect.  I’ve been to battlefields before, Vicksburg and whathaveyou, but I had no idea of what was awaiting us.

Gallipoli is not just a battlefield.  It is also a graveyard to the thousands upon thousands of young men who never left there.

We saw the pillbox machine gun nests first.  These smallish grey concrete boxes clinging to the hillside and the beach seemed terribly incongruous with the deep aquamarine of the ocean below.  Several of them had tumbled from their supports and were slowly being eroded by the waves.

Next came the first cemetery at Anzac Cove.  Just before we entered the graveyard, we stopped to read Ataturk’s words on a huge sculpture nearby.  Of Gallipoli, he said:

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

By the time I got through reading it, I had tears in my eyes.  How many world leaders have had the grace and the basic humanity to say something like this about an enemy that had tried to kill them personally?  The magnitude of understanding and compassion in this inscription is something we could use today, the ability to recognize that the things that divide us don’t have to demonize the other side.

Our bus continued on its winding path to the Lone Pine cemetery, mostly made up of Australia’s dead.  An entire hillside is covered with small neat stones. On each is a name, a date, and an age.  When you walk through the rows of markers, I think it is the ages that rise up and demand acknowledgment.  Here is one who was only 22.  Another was 18.  Beside him lies a soldier who was only 15.  They were children.  Just children.

In addition to the absolute heart-break of the ages is the fact that almost every one has an additional
inscription.  Many are the repetitive stock phrases we employ as epitaph.  Some are wrenchingly personal – a message telling the departed that his sisters will miss him, a phrase somehow managing to express pride and endless grief at the same time.  Some people have traveled great distances to lay crudely fashioned crosses against the base of the markers.  Others have stuck silk “buddy poppies” in the crevasses of the massive stone walls of names beside the one their family lost in the battle.

I could feel the weight of the place like a physical hand on my back.  We stopped once more to see the trenches in which this bloody bit of history had happened.  Now, they look so innocuous.  It’s hard to imagine anything more complex than a child’s game of hide and seek happening in the shallow timber-reinforced structures.  The moment that it sinks in that this is the ground that ran red and that this is the place where Ataturk told his men, “I’m not commanding you to fight.  I am commanding you to die,” it can never be seen as a playful place again.

Surreally, as we wound our way down the recently repaved roads, we began to pass picnicking families, men who had strung up hammocks between the trees near the beach.  Little children were splashing and dunking one another within sight of one of the crumbling pillboxes.  A brightly-colored kiosk selling cotton candy and ice cream beckoned.  I could not resolve these things in my mind, the stark rows of stones marching across the hill and the red and white flowered beach umbrella.

Perhaps, in the end, the children and the ice cream were actually always a part of it.  Both sides surely thought they were doing what was necessary, right, and good to allow safety for all things, even children at play.  History tells us that without the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, the modern nation I am in right now would not exist in this form.  Maybe after all, all of those who laid down their lives on those shores, so many of them really just kids themselves, would be proud to see that the grim grey pillboxes are not all of the story.

Subjective History

Yesterday we went to Iznik.  It's famous for a variety of reasons.  First, it is a center for the production of the fabulous and famous tiles named after the city itself.

Even more than this, Iznik was once Nicea.  Nicea was the site of several councils that defined modern Christianity.  The first was held in a church in the city about 325 AD.  Three hundred and eighteen bishops from all across the Roman world were called to Nicea by Constantine because he happened to have a summer house there.  Together, they decided what was and was not going to be acceptable practice and belief.

The most famous result of these conferences in Nicea was the Nicene Creed.  If you are not familiar with it, here it is:

We believe in one God, 
the Father, the Almighty, 
maker of heaven and earth, 
of all that is, seen and unseen. 
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, 
the only Son of God, 
eternally begotten of the Father, 
God from God, Light from Light, 
true God from true God, 
begotten, not made, 
of one Being with the Father. 
Through him all things were made. 
For us and for our salvation 
he came down from heaven: 
by the power of the Holy Spirit 
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, 
and was made man. 
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; 
he suffered death and was buried. 
On the third day he rose again 
in accordance with the Scriptures; 
he ascended into heaven 
and is seated at the right hand of the Father. 
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, 
and his kingdom will have no end. 

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, 
who proceeds from the Father and the Son. 
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. 
He has spoken through the Prophets. 
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. 
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. 
We look for the resurrection of the dead, 
and the life of the world to come. Amen. 

As you can see, it more or less lines out the basic tenets of Christianity.  I stood in the place where this happened.

The building might not have been the same structure as the one from 325 AD, but it was ancient, even compared to other countries and structures I've been in.  For a long time, it stood mostly derelict.  It was a site of pilgrimage and tourist curiosity for its major and important role in shaping a major world religion.  Signs in Turkish and English pointed out features of interest to those who came to see it.

 Recently, though, the government put a new tile roof on it and consecrated it as a mosque.  One of our group leaders had been there about the time it was closed for that renovation.  She'd been able to go inside, though, and see the scarred and neglected interior and read information placards that let Turkish and English speaking visitors get a sense of what they were looking at.

None of that was there when we went through.  There was no indication that an ancient fresco was tucked under a floor-level arch or that remnants of paintings of the saints clung tenaciously to the high arching ceilings of the apse.  They have survived time, nature, and deliberate defacement during the period when icons were banned, but now, they might lose their fight because of the changing nature of the building and a total lack of preservation.

This one small place leads to a much larger issue.  I was reading Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk today, and he talked at length about the idea that the Turkish nationalist have gone out of their way to co-opt the things they think reinforce their narrative of Turkey and her origins.  He says:

"When they wished to emphasize the Turkish of Muslim side...conservative writers created an Ottoman heaven where no one questioned the power or legitimacy of the pasha, where families and friends confirmed their ties to one another through rituals and traditional values....  Aspects of Ottoman culture that might offend westernized middle-class sensibilities - concubines, the harem, polygamy, the pasha's right to beat people - were tamed and softened...."

I would like to add to this list that in their efforts to refashion the past to suit them that they've also chosen to ignore, rewrite, or knock down vast portions of their history, which also happens to be critical history of the rest of the world.  In excluding things from their own narrative, they are removing the ability to keep these things for others whose narrative run along with and alongside that of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey.

We've talked a lot in this institute about how those who conquer get to take the stuff they want, slap their namebrand on it to legitimize their authority, and then use it as a base to surpass the accomplishments of that previous culture.  The great example of this is the Aya Sofia, of course, and the Suleymaniye sitting right down the street, glittering, lovely, and just that tiny bit more grandiose than the church-turned-mosque had been....

While every people should get to say what happens to the stuff in their own country, I think that if the present revision and re-envisioning of Turkey's past continues, a great loss will occur.  I don't just mean that those for whom these places and items have present significance will lose.  I mean that someday, the people of Turkey will look up and realize that they should have protected these things, should have found a way to hold them even if they weren't "en vogue" for a long time.  They will want them.  They will miss them.  In the way of such things, they will mourn for their loss.  Perhaps they will even build simacrula of them, put museums on the ruins of what is left.  It's happened elsewhere.

Wouldn't it be lovely if instead they simply found a way to keep the real instead of having to remake history?

Cuneiform and Oil Lamps

Today, we visited the Sadberk Hanim Museum. It is housed in the former residence of one of Turkey's richest families. I have no pictures because we were forbidden to take them inside, but the house itself was lovely.

Inside, the home was divided into two parts. One held three full floors of items the family had collected over the years. There were rooms of Chinese celadon and Ottoman tiles. There were cases of jeweled tiaras and cases full of Islamic calligraphy. A whole floor was dedicated to textile arts, and the richness of detail and beauty of even the hand towels on display was incredible.

My favorite part was to be found across the lobby, though. The other side of the house held artifacts dating all the way back to the 5th century BC. There were items from ancient cultures I've heard about all my life - the Assyrians, the Hittites. Each floor circled around through a timeline. There were tiny statues made from lead or silver, large marble fragments, curving clay pots.

One floor had a wall-sized display of Hellenic oil lamps. They were arranged in swirls and spirals underneath their protective glass. While all had basically the same shape, many had completely unique stamped or carved decoration. There were gods and goddesses, animals and abstract patterns. Some were simple, others ornate, some few obscene. What touched me was that each of them had been used regularly, been necessary, to someone. As I stared at their subtle color and pattern variations, I couldn't help but wonder how many hands had grasped them, how many fingers slipped through the tiny loop on the back to carry them so they could dispel the darkness. They were by no means the most valuable or flashy thing on display, but that humble elegant utility rendered them charming.

One floor down and several centuries back in time was a case of tiny clay tablets. I stepped up, certain of what I was seeing but unable to process it properly. Inside the softly lit enclosure were some fifteen or twenty pieces of cuneiform records. It's absurd, but I teared up looking at them. What story did they have to tell? Who had taken the time to press that stylus into the wet clay over and over again to create it? From all those thousands of years ago, the words on those fragments of hardened earth were still reaching out, still trying to connect to their readers, totally unaware that those readers are dust now, themselves.

Spenser wrote a sonnet to his love telling her that he would make her immortal by writing of her and their love in a poem. Today, I saw the ultimate expression of that in action. Whatever those people loved or cared about enough to record was alive there. That is the power of writing. We channel our ephemeral lives into blocks of stone or clay, into sheets of paper or the skins of animals, into the electronic mysteries of our computer's hard drive or cyberspace, and some part of us lives on. Some part of us connects to all those other writers crying out from every age. And even when our format has become as inaccessible as those clay tablets now are to most of us, then that slice of immortality will still remain. Our loves and our dreams will still exist. What an encouraging thought.