Steve: If you like baklava etc you owe it to yourself to go to this place. http://istanbuleats.com/2009/05/karakoy-gulluoglu-still-flaky-after-all-these-years/
-----Original Message-----
>From: Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Aug 7, 2012 7:39 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Snap - Vincent
>
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>(A snap newly refined from my journal en route in Turkey)
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>Monday, June 4, 2012
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>The
>intense presence of Istanbul as a vertiginous space – particularly so as we
>walk &/or take the “vehicular tram” down the steep hill from the Galata
>Tower to the Galata Bridge. The walk across the Golden Horn, the name for the
>extended body of water between the old town- the Faith District which is full
>of ancient churches and mosques – and the Galata neighborhood which was once
>the home of Christians, refugee Jews, other tribes and criminals. The Bridge's wide east side pedestrian walkway is crowded; young and old,
>fishing rods in hand, shoulder to shoulder, including a few women friends or
>family among them, hold their rods out or prop them on the side edge of the
>protective steel rail; occasionally they variously break to lean over the
>walkway to prepare their hooks with fresh bait. This constant visual presence
>of people fishing – as we discover - can strike one as almost a religious rite.
>The waiting at what is now the darkening edge of dusk, waiting, the pulling
>back on the poles in response to a nibble, the occasional catch of a fish,
>their singular silver bellied dark bodies dangling through the late light,
>lowered on to the sidewalk, then released into a white bucket. They may be
>sardines or small bass, I don’t know. Most fascinating is, pole in hand, the
>intense focus, and among some, the deep quiet of the waiting. A kind of
>secular prayer. It’s as if to get a nibble or to hook an actual fish
>is to confirm the existence, the vital living existence of one’s soul. Looking
>here at Istanbul’s citizens, stretched out across the bridge one might imagine
>that each was filled with an isolated interior darkness without a connection to
>anything. The loneliness that accompanies the quest to make contact with a
>fish, and the sense of desire that accompanies it, is practically palpable. Vertiginous.
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>Stephen Vincent
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