Middle East

People Watching In Sultanahmet

Paul Hemphill 3 Comments

‘If you know your history, then you know where you coming from. Then you wouldn’t have to ask me who the ‘eck do I think I am’. Bob Marley, Buffalo Soldiers.

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People watching in Sultanahmet on a wet Saturday afternoon in Spring.

It’s very like people watching in Newtown, Sydney.

The history of Istanbul, of Turkey, of the Turkish people, is written in the faces of the passersby. There is no pure Turk, just as there is no pure Arab, Jew, Slav, Celt, or Caucasian. Indeed, you see them all passing by. And it has been raining these past two days. The umbrella sellers are making a killing with their see-through parapluies. Everyone, tourists and locals alike are sporting them.

The weekend is promenade time. Families parade up and down, past the pastry and kebab shops, the hawkers and the hustlers. Young men sidle by with their girls, girls walk out with their honeys. Groups of girlfriends, and boy-groups gather and gaggle and gossip. Western folk and eastern folk. This is where east and west meet, literally, figuratively, ethnically, and yes, geographically. And it is written on the faces and in the garb of the perambulating populace.

Sunday in the park

Muhajibabes in beautiful scarves (the Great Bazaar is chocka with wonderful day cashmeres and pashminas – there is no excuse for drabness). “Mandy, Mother of Brian” in vast and bulbous black. Ladies in full cover, some dark and exotic, and mysteriously alluring, and others that make me think that they are doing us all a favour (non-PC, but there you go). I just saw a clown with green hair and a red nose. Fashionistas and paysans. And the many, many ordinary folk, old, young, and babes in arms, enjoying the weekend. All oblivious to the feral dogs and cats that roam through these parts.

There are no pubs on every corner. There are no rows of wine bars. There are no ice-cream and yoghurt shops (though we did find a good bar just across from the square in front of Hagia Sophia).

Oh, it makes you wonder.

For other posts about Turkey in In That Howling Infinite, see: 

 

Sailing to Byzantium, Ottoman Redux – an alternative history, Cha-cha-cha-changes and The Watchers of the Water  

Bombs and Babies

Paul Hemphill 3 Comments
The Atlantic, Sept 9th 2016

Syrian children have been subjected to “unspeakable” suffering in nearly five years of civil war, with the Government and its allies responsible for countless killings, maiming and torture, and the opposition for recruiting youngsters for combat and using terror tactics in civilian areas, according to the first United Nations report on the issue.   See:  http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47077#.UvKrOWKSzE0

Reports and pictures out of Damascus and Aleppo of the use of barrel bombs, and sarin and chlorine gas on civilian neighbourhoods, I am reminded of Chaim Nachman Bialik’s poem, Al haShehita (On the Slaughter), about the Kishinev Pogrom in the spring of 1903:

And cursèd be he that saith: avenge this! Such vengeance for blood of babe and maiden Hath yet to be wrought by Satan.

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In A Short History of The Rise and Fall Of The West, I wrote of how, in Pity The Nation, his tombstone of a book about Lebanon’s civil war, and Israel’s intervention therein, the redoubtable journalist Robert Fisk writes of a Lebanese doctor, Amal Shamaa: “I had to take the babies and put them in buckets of water to put out the flames. When I took them out half an hour after, they were still burning. Even in the mortuary, they smouldered for hours”. “Next morning”, Fisk continues, “Amal Shamaa took the tiny corpses out of the mortuary for burial. To her horror, they again burst into flames”. Such is the effect of phosphorous shells on mortals. Made in America, used on Arabs, by Jews. But it happens anywhere and everywhere, inflicted by anyone on everyone.