The wanderlust gene

For whose eyes were these colossal Medusa heads created? That’s what I wonder while I look right into those cold stone eyes and these mythological women seem to be looking right back at me. Why on earth the Byzantines many centuries ago decided to use this head-shaped stones to form bases for two columns that would be immersed under thousands of tones of water? A marvel submerged and forgotten for centuries in a far corner of a cistern.
In ancient architecture, sculptures and high reliefs crowned classical buildings, where we humans can barely appreciate them. Why wasting time on something that is not going to be visible? What is the reason of existence of these unreachable detailed gems? It feels like if these wise men wanted these architectural masterworks to be seen by a Higher Power. Maybe they feared that this Supreme Being would be displeased if every detail was not thought through properly. I’ll dare to say that they didn’t create these gems for their contemporaries but to please the Creator. Or maybe they thought that I, an agnostic fascinated by old stones, would be here, many generations later, in the wildly contemporary Istanbul, open-mouthed ten meters under ground.

I sigh and inhale the smell of immemorial humidity. I can sense the Koi fish changing direction in the water underneath me. The sound of dripping water from the forest of columns is soothing. The dimly lit space seems almost unreal. It’s the ideal environment to philosophize about the permanence of art and the transience of those who created it. It’s the ultimate purpose of art the link between death and life? I snobbishly say these fancy words to myself with the right temple of the sunglasses in my mouth. Then I am interrupted by a herd of tourists taking selfies. I quietly move on a few steps back. I get suddenly sad when I think about the city above ground: a landscape of contemporary agnosticism, uncaring about an omniscient observer, that creates, digests and defecates banal buildings. But these ancient men seemed maniacally obsessed with the finishing of certain corners and edges that no eye would be able to see. Thousands of slaves sweated blood for a piece that only He would enjoy. Or She. Or It.
Maybe God – call him God, call him Energy, call him X - was for centuries the sole viewer of the exquisite submerged hairy snakes. I observe the upside down Medusa heads and I think that its fair that occasionally this deity shares these hidden beauties with us, blind mortals.