Recorded Books Inc. - Along the Bosphorus

I f Istanbul speaks of defeat, destruction, deprivation, melancholy, and poverty, the Bosphorus sings of life, pleasure, and happiness. Istanbul draws its strength from the Bosphorus. But in earlier times, no one gave it much importance: They saw the Bosphorus as a waterway, a beauty spot, and, for the last two hundred years, a fine location for summer palaces.

For centuries, it was just a string of Greek fishing villages, but from the eighteenth century, when Ottoman worthies began building their summer homes, mostly around Gks, Kksu, Bebek, Kandilli, Rumelihisar, and Kanlca, there arose an Ottoman culture that looked toward Istanbul to the exclusion of the rest of the world. The yalssplendid waterside mansions built by the great Ottoman families during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuriescame to be seen, in the twentieth, with the advent of the Republic and Turkish nationalism, as models of an obsolete identity and architecture. But these yals that we see photographed in Memories of the Bosphorus, reproduced in Mellings engravings, and echoed in the yals of Sedad Hakk Eldemthese grand houses, with their narrow high windows, spacious eaves, bay windows, and narrow chimneys, are mere shadows of this destroyed culture.

In the 1950s, the bus route from Taksim Square to Emirgn still passed through Nisanta. When we went by bus to the Bosphorus with my mother, we would board it just outside our house. If we went by tram, the last stop was Bebek, and after a long walk along the shore, we would meet up with the boatman, who was always waiting for us in the same place at the same time, and climb into his caque. As we slipped among the rowboats, pleasure craft, and city-bound ferries, the mussel-encrusted barges and the lighthouses, leaving the still waters of Bebek Bay to meet the currents of the Bosphorus, rocking in the wake of passing ships, I would pray that these outings might last forever.

To be traveling through the middle of a city as great, historic, and forlorn as Istanbul, and yet to feel the freedom of the open seathat is the thrill of a trip along the Bosphorus. Pushed along by its strong currents, invigorated by the sea air that bears no trace of the dirt, smoke, and noise of the crowded city that surrounds it, the traveler begins to feel that, in spite of everything, this is still a place in which he can enjoy solitude and find freedom. This waterway that passes through the center of the city is not to be confused with the canals of Amsterdam or Venice or the rivers that divide Paris and Rome in two: Strong currents run through the Bosphorus, its surface is always ruffled by wind and waves, and its waters are deep and dark. If you have the current behind you, if you are following the itinerary of a city ferry, you will see apartment buildings and