Life on Apple Mountain (Babil Sokak) – by Lisa Morrow, June 2010
I went back to Apple Mountain the other day, the little inner city suburb of Istanbul where we lived a few years ago. About a ten minute walk from Taksim Square, it is worlds away from the faded 20th century elegance of Istiklal Caddesi, famous for its Art Deco architecture and run down consulates, Orthodox Greek churches and old tram way. There the tourists mix with the moneyed Turks and the wannabes, all strolling up and down in the chaos and noise of people wanting to go somewhere with nowhere to go.
To reach our old street, we almost always walked down Babil Sokak. Babil Sokak, in Apple Mountain, wends down one of Istanbul’s famous hills, and has a ramshackle collection of tea houses, restaurants, hairdressers, bootmakers and other local shops lining its rough and ready bitumen street, ending abruptly in a steep staircase that drops down mercilessly to the bowels of Tarlabasi, an as yet unreconstructed suburb of the poor and disaffected. When I walked down Babil Sokak to my street, I was known to and knew almost all the shopkeepers by sight, and felt warmed by their welcome. On the top right hand corner was a sparse and basic supermarket, ably cashiered by Meryem, who we called Bucky, on account of her unfortunate teeth. She liked me a great deal and from under her headscarf gave me the double blink welcome, particular to Turkish women, while uttering other words of welcome. I was always polite to her, even though she served me so slowly, counting out aloud every single time as she calculated the change. I felt sorry for her as her headscarf only accentuated her hook nose and prominent teeth, which seemed to jump out when she smiled.
Under the supermarket was the aptly named Tizzy hairdressers. I say aptly because the women who frequented it often scuttled in hidden under gauzy headscarves (designed to accentuate their femininity and beauty rather than to hide it a la Meryem style), only to reappear some hours later as natural bottle blondes teetering out on high heels in impossibly tight jeans. Next to the hairdressers was an assortment of shops including a photo developing place that specialized in glamour passport shots. These are necessary for everything from actually getting your passport, to transport passes, residence permits or identity cards, high school and university paperwork and a vast array of other documentation, most of which require a minimum of four photos, although I am yet to know just what each copy of the photo is used for. At last count there were probably over fifty photos of me looking far more sophisticated and groomed than I do in real life, circulating or maybe filed in the bureaucratic labyrinth of Turkish government departments.
Next to the photography shop there was a bread shop, a café, electrical goods and other small non-descript shop fronts I rarely visited, because the other side of the street held more interest. Starting from the top was the shop where I bought my phone recharge cards. After ascertaining the actual price by asking in three separate establishments (in Turkey, always ask at least three times if you want to be sure the information is correct), it was here I went when my credit was running out. There are many such shops in Turkey, filled with numerous mobile phones, phone covers, cables and accessories, batteries and many items of varying prices so that anyone who passes will see something they either need or can afford. If I was unlucky the owner was behind the counter, smoking the cheapest brand of cigarettes (the odour can kill from 50 paces), otherwise I had to wait for him to run up from our favourite cake shop. Run by an affable man who happily extended our Turkish vocabulary for pastries and sweets, he sold the most divine almond pastries that we bought at least once a week. The glass display cases were filled with a mouthwatering selection of pistachio filled baklava, individual pieces of chocolate whipped torte, and tray after tray of sweet biscuits. No matter how much or how little you bought, the goods were always placed on a cardboard tray, then inside a paper bag, and if it was a gift, it would then be wrapped in coloured paper and ribbon. For really exorbitant purchases you could buy a quilted, beribboned, cloth-padded chocolate box, heart, oval or square shaped, of the type once used exclusively on Valentine’s Day.
At one of the three inside tables our neighbour, an overweight Lebanese man who spoke good English, would usually be smoking and talking about football. We learnt little personal information about him, except that his nine year old son lived in Canada, and was due to visit in the early spring. His gentle nature and obvious education conflicted strongly with his heavy stubble, and the tracksuit he always wore, teamed with a pair of indoor slippers. He looked more likely to be living rough under a bridge than discoursing on world politics, which he also did.
The next establishment was a dodgy nightclub, with exterior walls that were painted black, and a group of Turkish Arabic speaking bouncers gathered outside, day and night. We never went inside, as the presence of Arabic speakers suggested the place to be one of those clubs where lonely businessmen are lured in on the promise of a drink and a girl, only to reel outside many hours later, with empty wallets and broken dreams. Nonetheless, the bouncers were on the whole nice young men, sometimes joined by older, harder looking characters, but all, having determined I was a local, never gave me any bother. On the contrary, once when my partner was really sick, one of them walked me up to the main street to point out the late night chemist, so I could get something to relieve Kim’s cough and fever. I never saw anyone entering or leaving the establishment, and often wished the bouncers bon appetite when I saw them eating lunch on low stools at the entrance. The other locals also accepted their presence, although from time to time the club was closed, with an official notice plastered on the front double doors. This usually occurred about a week after we saw a police car parked outside. Babil Sokak is essentially a residential area, but like many inner city suburbs undergoing change, there is a mix of old and new, private and public. This was mirrored in the way the main road, a hub of commercial activity by day, became a bleak strip at night, frequented by transvestites shifting uneasily on high heels, half hidden in dark doorways. It was always their laughter, in disturbingly deep voices, that alerted one to their presence, and their pimps waiting in cars parked at the curb.
All down the same block as the nightclub there were small restaurants, either only selling chicken or beef doner, or only selling ‘wet’ food. These bufes displayed four or five different stews everyday. Common to them all were rice cooked in butter, and large white beans in a tomato sauce. These two were the cheapest combination you could buy, and many people could not afford the meat dishes at a few dollars more per serve. As we both worked in the week, we only saw these places at the end of the day, either with only a sliver of doner on the vertical skewer, or with the ban marie gleaming and empty, ready for the next day’s service. However, one weekend, at the beginning of the Sacrifice Festival (Kurban Bayram in Turkish but more commonly known as Eid el-Adha in Arabic), I saw one of the restaurants being put to another use. It was one of the larger establishments, further down the hill, neatly tiled in blue and white. Three men in the black and white of waiters, were frantically wrestling a disobedient sheep into the premises. Looking inside I noted that all the tables and chairs had been stacked away, up the back, leaving the large tiled floor free. It is my guess they planned to sacrifice the animal themselves, or pay a roving butcher to do it for them. The site was crucial as the tiles could easily be hosed off, and the bloody water swept out with a broom.
Above them was the video shop, where I bought pirate copies of new releases for about $3 each. Unfortunately for me, the local tastes seemed mainly to run to boys own adventure action films or horror slasher movies, so when I found something to watch, I felt really lucky. Doubly so if the movie was foreign and had English subtitles. My Turkish is adequate but not yet that good!
The final place I visited on this block was the bootmaker, snugly lodged in a small shop in the corner building. A small man with shiny black hair and moustache, his dark olive skin suggested he originally came from the east of Turkey. He usually sat among the bootstraps, laces, leather strips, shoe lasts and shoe polish grime of his shop, passing the time with a crony or two, drinking tea and smoking. Like most of his clients, I never stepped fully into his shop cum workspace, for it was so caked in black paste it seemed impossible not to be marked by it no matter how careful you were. He would handle the offered shoes and quote a price a third that of in Australia, and the cheerful promise the work would be done by the following morning or afternoon, depending on what time you had arrived.
Like every suburb and neighbourhood in Turkey, there was a mosque nearby. Unusually though, the local mosque was built into the basement of an apartment building, and the imam worked as a barber across the road. Unless it was actually snowing, which it did one January, Friday lunchtime prayers were always well attended, and the narrow road leading off Babil Sokak would be carpeted with prayer mats, each occupied by an intensely devout individual, who earlier in the week would usually be found hanging around the cafes, carparks and nearby street corners, generally unshaven and particularly secular in appearance. Up the same street was Istanbul’s own Vatican city, with a large yellow and white building surrounded by high walls, barbed wire and CCTV cameras. I never saw any priests entering or leaving the building, but then I rarely passed by once I knew of its existence. Over the years bombings in Istanbul have always targeted foreign representatives, be they consulates, synagogues or banks. It feels safer to take a different route.
The only other place I visited frequently was the internet café on the next corner. The skinny young manager stayed outside with all his friends in summer smoking and talking. In winter the same crew sat indoors hugging a small heater, still smoking and talking. Expense had been spared on the décor. The computers were built into small wooden booths with only enough room on one side to roll the mouse, and on the other side space for a small, tulip shaped glass of tea. The windows were covered with dark sheets of fabric, crudely hung, and what lighting there was, was minimal to the point of being useless. However an alluring atmosphere was not essential, as the customers gave the place life. Like most internet cafes in Turkey it was predominantly peopled by small school boys, those lucky enough to have spending money that is, playing video games at high volume and shrieking non-stop with excitement. The other inhabitants were desperate, lovesick boys, Skyping girls in other cities or countries on the promise of a dream or a visa and a better life. I was the only person to be in there alone as everyone else came with a friend or a gang, depending on the age and planned activity.
The internet cafe was situated just before the point where Babil Sokak began to fall away so steeply that in winter, when it snowed and ice covered the road old ladies would grab the arm of the nearest person and insist on a safe escort down to the turn off to their street. Halfway down this treacherous slope was the water shop. As we only lived around the corner and could never make ourselves understood on the phone, we would drop in when passing and order another 19 litre bottle to be delivered to our apartment whenever we ran out of drinking water. Not long after we slowly and wearily climbed the three flights of stairs to our front door the buzzer would ring, and we would let the water boy in. An impossibly tiny boy of maybe 13 or 14, he would heft the heavy bottle up the same three flights of stairs at a run. The staircase was narrow and circular, and at times the light went out, but he never slowed his pace. He was not even out of breath when he arrived at our front door where he respectfully discarded his shoes to enter the apartment to deliver the water bottle to the kitchen, remove the seal and affix the pump. Then he would accept payment for the bottle, refuse a tip and with a sunny smile, run back down again.
The January it snowed, this same boy was one of the many we saw sledding down neighbouring streets, joyous that school had been cancelled. All the kids used plastic bags in the place of sleds, but their excitement was as high as if they had the latest snow equipment. In particular in the poor areas, the children rarely had many toys, but they had imagination and took every opportunity to play outside on the small, often grimy narrow streets. Unlike the German Shepherd that guarded the nearby carpark. It expressed its disdain of the cold white ice covering the ground, fastidiously shaking each paw clean as it looked for a warm place to perform its toilet.
Today, some years later, the nightclub has gone, and the pastry shop is now a small restaurant serving chicken and meat doner, on half a loaf of bread or a plate. We learnt from the new proprietor that the brother of the man who used to run the pastry shop has opened up down the street, so there is still a family connection there. Most of the other places were the same, although the bootmaker no longer had a proper shop. The building he rented in was completely renovated and he missed out on a new lease. Now he has a spot on the corner opposite his old workshop, under an umbrella, in front of the vacant lot that still shows signs of a new building going up, except only the foundations have been laid, exactly the same state of progress as it was before.
Just as when I lived there, if you walk down the narrow pavements, dodging people sitting in the sun on low stools or chairs and boys delivering water, others pass you, waving hello to their neighbours, or calling down from their 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor apartments. Women still put money in a basket tied to a long piece of rope and lower it to street level, so Ahmet, Hasan or Fatih, who runs the nearest shop, can place a loaf or six in it for the housewife to haul back up and serve with lunch. Small children race past grappling large loaves of bread for dinner, men walk arm in arm laughing loudly at some joke, while teenage girls eye the boys hanging outside the internet café with decorous interest. Roving peddlers pass with trays of simits on Sunday mornings, baskets of new season cherries or grindstones attached to their motorbike to sharpen knives. Everywhere you look people are living their lives voraciously, loudly and well.
The kindness and community of the people who live and work in Babil Sokak, on Apple Mountain, is still the same. As we sat under the awning of the restaurant, at a table just small enough to fit on the narrow pavement and wide enough to eat off, glad to be sipping ice cold freshly squeezed orange juice while waiting for our chicken doner to be served, a woman slipped on the street and fell. Within seconds one man helped her up off the ground, a different man picked up her handbag and shopping bags, another came rushing over with a chair for her to sit on. A fourth man handed her a glass of water, and the patron of Tizzy hairdressers brought his hand cologne for her to dab on the grazes on her hands. When she pulled up her trousers to check the blood on her knees, two passing women commiserated with her and helped her on her way.
If you liked this story and want to read more, you can in my new collection called Inside Out In Istanbul. Click on the link below to place your order.
http://www.bookshop.unimelb.edu.au/bookshop/p?9781921775604
