Travel and Memory

“This is the city of my nightmares.”

From the bench we share, its rungs dusted with the sleet of December dawn, I can see the Blue Mosque soar in front of me. Lit by yellow lamps throughout the night, it appears to be steeped in liquid gold, in amber wine. The Sea of Marmara lies whispering on the other side of the mosque, and if I close my eyes the veil of its vast heartland at once eclipses the black of my lids. Istanbul is perched between light and dark.

Here, in this courtyard that dilates daily to house tourists with cameras and guidebooks, I have found a moment of magic all for myself. I inhale deeply: the air speaks of ice, of the freshly lit tobacco of his cigarette, of fulfillment. In the cradle of empire—mere feet away from where Ottoman thrones still sit bedecked inside Topkapi Palace—I have made a niche for myself. In my own way, I have owned Istanbul. But what is this?

“The city of nightmares,” he repeats softly, his eyes not on the mosque but on his knees, his fingers tracing repetitive O’s across the denim that he wears.
“How so?” I struggle to separate from the shimmer of my own thoughts.
“Beyond these tourist enclaves there’s a tough city, my love. It’s dull and gloomy; it’s crowded. And once you've experienced loss here, it will never let you forget.”

He looks ahead now, the embers burning close to his mouth as he takes in his final drag of the cigarette. “How do you own a city?” I had recently asked myself in writing. When is it that a city brands itself on you, “never letting you forget”? Perhaps it is only after you have broken down within its walls, felt the shatter of grief at a time when you called the place your home. I look at his slouched shoulders and wonder if I could ever reach inside his caged anguish. When the cage is this very city, the city I am desperate to own.

There is yet the balm of memory. “A place belongs forever,” Joan Didion wrote, “to whoever claims it hardest…remembers it most obsessively.” As he crushes the stub and we rise to leave, I wonder. Perhaps one day he might create a palpable narrative for this city that would give him joy, even while it continued to cause him pain. Perhaps I might, through words, through a sieve of memory and melancholy, render the city into something exquisitely personal, a memento that others might recognize to be quintessentially mine. Someday, but not today, I might yet own Istanbul.