Bangkok’s Don Muang airport has closed after 92 years of commercial operation, making way for the new Suvarnabhumi airport. Yesterday the old airport was full of people taking photos. I feel a little sad, even though I’ve only been acquainted with the place for a handful of years. It wasn’t the best airport in the world, but neither was it the worst. It had a lived-in homely feel. There was never any hassle at customs, and you could always get something to eat and drink. And I’ll always remember the first time I stepped outside into the hot muggy velvet of a Bangkok night and felt inexplicably welcomed; that first drive down the expressway, past more massed city lights than I’d ever seen, and wats with mirror-tiled bargeboards that seemed to ripple like dragons as the headlights went past; the sense of a genius loci both holy and worldly, merciful and mischievous, and very much a thing unto itself; the unexpected feeling that I could happily live here.

There are reports that the new airport is haunted. Yay!

Things are still relaxed. It was a bloodless coup (plenty of people went and got their photos taken in front of the tanks), and so far there has been very little in the way of protest. One elderly gentleman, interviewed as he was standing at Government House showing his support for the army, said he’d been to a lot of coups but this was the best one ever.

In Bangkok the general opinion seems to be in favour of the military action, as long as the army keeps its promise to restore democracy. According to the Administrative Reform Council, the king has endorsed it. We only have their word for that, but if it’s a lie it’s a pretty bold one.

Basically, Thaksin had undermined the electoral process - buying votes in poor rural areas, and appointing election officials who could be counted on to turn a blind eye. It looked like he was planning to install military cronies in Bangkok, so that come the election, protests in the capital could be easily put down, so the army may have done the right thing by acting now. Time will tell.

You’ve probably heard there’s been an attempted military coup in Thailand to get rid of Thaksin, the unpopular prime minister. So far all is ok, and the provisional authority has declared loyalty to the king. It’s the middle of the night and we don’t know if the coup has actually succeeded, or who’s in charge, but goodness knows what foreign news networks will report, so I just wanted to let you know we’re all right. Cell phone networks are down, and I don’t know if other communications will be up or down in the next few days, but everything seems safe in Bangkok. I suspect the worst dangers will be the traffic and the shellfish, as usual.

On my way back I wander through the streets around the bazaar, looking for a Shahmaran souvenir. It’s Sunday and the bazzaar is closed, but quite a few other shops are still open. The salesmen seem relaxed, and amused by my mission, as they try to sell me anything else they happen to have. Shahmaran goodies are nonexistent in these quarters, it seems.

One young man proposes that, in fact, he could be the Shahmaran. He does have rather extraordinary eyes, large and green-hazel, slightly protuberant, almond-shaped. Distinctly ophidian. He’s delicate, with pale skin and black hair. All this is a combination I find very attractive. I can’t help flirting just a little.

“Hmm, maybe your eyes,” I say.

The organs in question light up. “They change colour,” he volunteers. “Look.” He faces away from the sun. “Now they’re brown…” He faces into the sun. “See, now they’re green.”

“Mine do the same thing,” I tell him, demonstrating.

He looks quite delighted, and offers his hand. We shake, in a pact of the snake people. “Are you an angel?” he says. “You are an angel…?”

The temptation, when asked this, is to say yes; but then one may be asked to provide evidence in the form of miracles and such. I’ve already told him I’m English (a better policy than saying you’re Australian, if you want to be left alone - I’ve taken to telling all Turkish salesmen I’m English).

“Just an English girl,” I say, adding, “a married English girl,” as my little experiment in flirting has possibly garnered a bit too much of a result, though I hope he’s just flirting too (every second salesman I’ve met here has been an outrageous flirt - all in the name of persuading you to part with money. These young Turks would make a fine harem of gigolos).

Somewhat to my surprise he breaks off our handshake and looks embarrassed. “Ah, me too… I mean, I have… there is no chance.”

With smiles, Snake Eyes and No Angel wave bye-bye, and No Angel crosses the Galata Bridge and wanders back up the steep cobblestone street, past Habib Gerez’s house, thinking what a pleasant activity flirting is. It makes you feel good and them feel good. Even if one inadvertently excites hopes that then have to be let down (a higher risk in cross-cultural flirting), there’s still an exchange of admiration, as when one smells a flower, or when two friendly dogs sniff each other’s butts and wag their tails.

I’ve decided there should be a visual kei band called Harem of Gigolos. They wouldn’t have to be Japanese. In fact, they could be 3D computer generated characters, like in the Final Fantasy movie. For live performances they’d be projected as holograms. Maybe they live in the universe of Reverend Ford Large.

Back at the Buyuk Londra, I sit in the wonderful lounge and do a little writing. I can hear a voice at the bar - male, middle-aged, measured, American, no, Canadian, speaking about the problems of Native Americans in British Columbia. To my Australian ears it sounds familiar. Do-gooders with the best intentions making things worse. Governments throwing money around in all the wrong directions. Numbers of native people bludging off handouts and benefits - hey, wouldn’t you, too? I would. Overfishing leading to problems no white man would have foreseen, such as not enough fish to feed the sled dogs, so the indigenous people who are still living, or trying to live, a traditional lifestyle are flying salmon in at exorbitant cost to feed them. Why won’t dog food do? Who knows? Maybe there are better nutrients in fish. Or, simply, why should they feed them dog food, when the lack of fish isn’t their fault?

Every so often the voice pauses, as if for the reply of an interlocutor, then goes on. There is, in fact, another middle-aged man at the bar, but he is quite silent. Maybe he communicates with the other by telepathy. I feel like having a conversation, so I wander over and order a capuccino at the bar and admit that I’d been overhearing. We get talking. The talkative one is called Don. The quiet one is Norm. They’re both biggish guys, casually dressed. When I tell them my last name is Bishop, they show me their college rings, both from a college called Bishops. Don says he’s sitting in the chair where Ernest Hemingway used to sit. Agatha Christie, he says, used to stay at this hotel too. I don’t ask whether she was also a barfly.

Don and I compare notes on the mess of indigenous affairs in both our countries. We agree, rather obviously, that there are no easy answers to most of the problems. One thing seems clear: governments could spend their indigenous affairs budgets more intelligently. I’m thinking of an example a friend from Queensland told me, about an Aboriginal community that received a $300,000 road grader. They hadn’t asked for it. They didn’t want it. So they drove it into a swamp and left it there to rust. And why not?

He asks what I’m doing in Istanbul. Holiday, I say. Are you a spy? he asks. I’m tempted to say No, I’m an angel. I say, If I were, I wouldn’t tell you. Norm laughs. He says that’s what Don said when someone asked him the same question.

They’ve been haunting an archaeological dig, looking at Anatolian ruins and petroglyphs. Norm becomes more voluble, speaking about how much is still to be discovered. What happens, he says, is that countries dig up their own stuff and leave the rest: Italians excavate Roman ruins, Greeks excavate Greek ruins, and so far no one had done that much about these several-thousand-year-old Turkish ruins. Maybe they’ll find the Shahmaran’s underground realm.

The talk turns to religion. Don is a convert from Anglicanism to Russian Orthodoxy. Norm thinks this is funny. I admit I think it’s funny too, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps just because it’s unusual. Anglicans who want a religion that’s a bit more, well, religious, or who just want a bit more incense and chanting in their lives, usually turn to Popery, or become Hare Krishnas.

Don doesn’t think it’s funny at all. Norm seems rather contemptuous. Don says Norm is a physicist. Feeling guilty that I was disrespectful of a Don’s sincere faith, I ask why he converted. Norm insinuates that it had something to do with the Anglican church’s decision to ordain women. Don says this did have something to do with it, but not everything by any means. Now, me, I can’t respect any religion or sect that doesn’t treat the sexes equally. I may still find value in the ethics championed by such a religion, but that’s as far as it goes. However, it’s a conversation I feel like, not an argument, so I make no comment, and listen to Don explain a few points of doctrine that do make Orthodoxy sound a bit better than Anglicanism, though the differences seem minor.

“What about original sin?” I ask.

“Orthodoxy believes in man’s fallen state,” says Don. “When you pray, you say, ‘I’m a lousy sonofabitch and I know it’.”

Ah, see, this is where I just don’t get it. When I pray, I say, “Chutzpah pleases you, Crom, so grant me (insert request). And if you do not listen, then to hell with you!” But like I said, I’m not spoiling for a rumble. I’d rather just listen to this interesting man talk. He says something about cigars, so this seems like a good time to split my last two cafe cremes. Now Don gets to sit in Hemingway’s chair smoking a cigar, albeit one of ladylike size.

A third man has appeared: Aidan. Also middle aged, lanky, with a mellow, smoke-damaged, purring British public school drawl that I want to bottle and preserve in a collection of fabulous voices. Don has offered me a drink. I ask for a banana daiquiri.

“We have no bananas,” sings Don.

“I could just have a gin and tonic…” But I haven’t had dinner. I want something more nutritious. “How about a white russian?”

There’s no coffee liqueur.

“Oh, for god’s sake, just have a gin and tonic and get it over with,” says Aidan, sounding as weary as the Wandering Jew.

But they have Bailey’s, so I can have a sort of Irish white russian. Aidan, it turns out, is Irish. He says Bailey’s isn’t, it was invented in London.

I talk to Aidan for a bit. He’s on holiday too. He loves Istanbul. I ask what he does when he’s not on holiday.

“I’m a pathologist,” he says in a voice of infinite sadness. He gazes into his drink, as if it had the power to show him some far better, alternative life. “Breasts are my speciality, so I get to look at all the tumours.” He’s beginning to sound like a cross between Marianne Faithful and Eeyore. “You specialise, you know. Right now they want you to specialise even more, so that you’ll only look at blood or lungs or guts for your whole life.” He loes Bangkok, too. “Another great city. It works.” This expression, “It works”, is one I’ve used about Bangkok, and heard other people use. No one says it works perfectly, but work it does.

Aidan buys me another white russian. I go and change into warm clothes for the plane. Don and Norm, who had gone to dinner, are back, and we all say farewell. Norm is going to send me pictures of those petroglyphs, and Don is going to put our time at the bar at the Buyuk Londra, or some version of it, in a story. Neither of us had said anything about being writers. It’s something you don’t always tell people.

I’m a little tipsy from my white russian dinner and wander rather unsteadily, and with unwonted cheer, through check-in and passport control. The plane’s another comfy new Airbus, and half empty. With a spare seat beside me, I can curl up with my feet hanging just a little over the edge. I get 6 hours sleep - not bad for a plane trip at all.

In Bangkok it’s rather a hot day for this time of year.

“In Hat Yai,” says the taxi driver. “Boom. Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. Many people, no good.”

“How many dead?” I ask.

“Five or six. Many injured. Mother, baby. No good. Muslims. People no like Thaksin. Now where? Could be Phuket. Could be Bangkok.” He laughs nervously.

Tomorrow night, Thailand has its low-key coup. My Thursday kids class is cancelled. Later, one of my Japanese housewife English students tells me the Japanese schools had two days off. She and her husband found out about the coup, she says, when the school rang them at 1:00 a.m. to annouce the snap holiday.

“We were very surprised,” she said.

Walking down to the bridge, I stop to watch some kittens playing. An oldish bohemian-looking guy with a ponytail and a scarf says something to me in Turkish. I tell him I can’t understand. He switches to English, and we start talking. I think I’ve seen him before, selling jewellery off a table around here, but I’m not positive. He asks what I do. I say I’m a writer. He says he’s a writer too. His name is Habib Gerez. In the next breath, he tells me he’s published over 60 books, and won numerous awards, including the Grand Prix d’Europe, and asks if I’d like to come inside his house. This seems too unlikely for an introduction to a carpet shop; and he has a bad limp, so I don’t have to worry about assault. So, yes, I say, and we go in…

So we go inside. The house, which doesn’t look like anything special from the outside, is very nice indeed indoors, high-ceilinged, full of light, and full of art: pictures, and sculptures, mostly wooden, of animals, and two or three naked female forms (one in polyester resin, lying face-down, in a position that might be private misery, or simply private thought, or even sleep. Its vulnerability disturbs me. I find myself wondering again about the ubiquity of nekkid ladies in art. How many times do you walk into a single woman’s house and see images of naked strapping lads? Why is the nude female body something for everyone to look at, and the nude male body not? Is it just because penises are so funny-looking? Inquiring minds want to know.)

Habib Gerez has a cupboard full of trophies, including the one for the Grand Prix d’Europe, and a handsome one from venice, in the shape of St Mark’s lion. He also has a bookcase full of volumes containing newspaper articles about him. He shows me these with pride and talks a little about how famous he is. I’d rather hear about his life and his work, but perhaps those are exhausting subjects for him. He paints as well as writes. Most of the paintings seem to be his. They’re rather nice, figures and landscapes in a colourful impressionistic-expressionistic style, some with Jewish imagery. He is aligned with a group that champions the removal of national borders, though whether this was just to do with Turkey joining the EU, or a more radical deracination of lines on the European (world?) map, I didn’t find out.

He is prolific: one room is filled with hundreds of unsold paintings. On a wall are some for which he has won prizes. Kindly, he gives me one of his books of poems, an anthology, in English, ‘Art is My Destiny’. I open it up and like what I read. There are some grammatical and spelling errors in the translation, but it doesn’t lack for feeling, and there’s a happy marriage of lyricism and directness in the verse. Here’s just a little, from a poem about Istanbul:

Istanbul is deprived.
Nobody protected her,
She has no true friends,
No one is her companion.
Istanbul is unfortunately
Impractical…

He asks me a little about myself. Do I have children? No, I say, with a little dread. Handsome Boy asked me the same question. When I said no, he said, “But you will…” “No.” “But a house is nothing without children.” “I don’t have a house.” I fear something of the sort will occur here - it’s a conversation I’ve had far too often. In fact, once is too often, when you think about it. People are such busybodies.

But Habib just looks at me. “You don’t want them.”
“No.”
No argument, no judgement. An ally. Or at least, not a busybody. I’m grateful.
We leave his house, say goodbye. He kisses my hand, a gallant gesture I always appreciate, and of which I have been the happy recipient three or four times on this holiday… and pinches my cheek. I’ll let him get away with it.

After this curious meeting, I head down to the old city again for tourist duty: the Blue Mosque and the Suleymaniye mosque. I’m beginning to suspect I have chronic, untreatable monument fatigue. It probably set in when my parents dragged me around a cathedral every weekend when we lived in England, and was made worse by self-inflicted excursions to too many wats in Thailand. Petra knocked my socks off, but after that, the Pyramids looked kind of small, and the repetitiveness of Egyptian temples was numbing. That Peles Castle completely enchanted me says something about the sheer magic of the place.

These two mosques don’t enchant me, I’m afraid. They are beautiful buildings, gracious, serene, with intricately painted ceilings and stained glass windows - very much like cathedrals, in fact. But they’re missing all the whimsy and weirdness of Christian ecclesiastical architecture and decoration: no gargoyles, no green man peeking out from under a corbel, the moss of older beliefs burgeoning in the cracks of the new; no silver tombs, mummified saints, putti, madonnas; no gory haggard Christ, no leaping devils, no monstrances, relics, banners: in short, nothing human. The only god here is geometry. Presumably this isn’t how the worshippers feel; but I’ve never been able to reconcile the rejection of images with acceptance of the sacred, or find a sense of godliness in a place without a sense of humour.

I feel an urgent need for some Hindu temple, crawling with painted idols, writhing with stories, full of offerings of milk and sweets and flowers. I’m incapable of worshipping the abstract. Give me Shiva and all his exploits. Give me Christ, with his parables and his suffering. Give me Mohammed, Jibril, afrits, genies! But don’t give me inhuman abstraction, because I don’t khow what to do with it.

Duty done, I head back to the Buyuk Londra to kill time before my flight, which leaves at midnight.

Ok, I hope this isn’t too different from what Dilik told me:

There were three poor men who had gone out looking for food. They happened to find a big lid buried in the sand. When they opened it, they found a well with jars of honey inside. The well was deep–too deep for them to reach the last jar at the bottom. One of them went down to get it–and the other two closed the lid, shutting him in there, taking the honey for themselves.

Down inside the well, the frightened man felt around in the dark and found a passageway. It led to an underground world, a strange and beautiful other realm. Presiding over this place was a royal being: half woman, half snake. He knew she must be the Shahmaran, queen of snakes. Many people had tried to find her, for she had the knowledge of medicinal plants and could cure all kinds of sickness. Long ago, she had trusted men, but they had betrayed her, and now she stayed in hiding.
‘I must kill you,’ said the Shahmaran, ‘otherwise you will tell others that I am here.’
He begged her to spare his life. She relented, and he stayed there with her. The two of them fell in love. In time, however, he missed his family and asked to be allowed to return home to visit them. The Shahmaran agreed, but said, ‘Don’t go to the hammam. Because you have seen me, your skin will turn to scales if it gets wet. Then people will know, and compel you to tell them where I am.’
The man agreed, and took his leave.

It happened that at this time, the sultan was sick. No doctor could cure him. He told his vizier to find the Shahmaran. The vizier, knowing that the skin of anyone who had seen the Shahmaran would become scaly if it came in contact with water, had all the people rounded up, in every city and town and village, and doused with water. In this way, the vizier found the man who had seen the Shahmaran.
To begin with he would say nothing, but under torture he finally revealed the location of the well in the sand.
The Shahmaran was captured and brought before the ailing sultan and the vizier.
‘The only cure for your majesty’s illness,’ she said, ‘is to drink a broth made from my body.’
Then she spoke to her human lover. ‘The broth will grant immortality,’ she said. ‘Because I love you, I want you to drink it. But be careful. You must only consume that made from the human half, which is the life-giving part. The snake half is poisonous.’
The sultan’s soldiers killed the Shahmaran and the broth was made. The man was so ashamed and grief-stricken that he drank the part made from the snake, because he wanted to die for having caused the Shahmaran’s death. The sultan drank the part made from her human half.
But the Shahmaran had lied. She had known that the man would feel this way and drink the broth to kill himself. The poison was in her human half, and the snake half contained the gift of immortality. The sultan died a horrible death, and the man acquired immortal life. As a final boon, he also gained all the Shahmaran’s knowledge of medicine, and was able to become a great doctor and share his knoweldge with others.

To this day, snakes believe the Shahmaran will come back. It’s a good idea to keep a picture of the Shahmaran in your house so that snakes will know you respect her. Moreover, a snake will sometimes fall in love with a woman who has beautiul dark eyes, thinking that she is the Shahmaran, and follow her around.

This is principally a Kurdish legend, although it is also known and told amongst other cultures in the region. I thought it was fascinating. I have to side with the snakes: I don’t think a being like her could possibly be dead. After all, immortality is an ages-old magical power of snakes: surely their queen possesses it in a high degree.
To me, as a modern feminist, the story suggested an allegory of a society where women’s botanical and medical knowledge was respected changing to a more patriarchal one where scholarship and doctoring became male preserves - but that’s just my take on it. I also couldn’t help thinking of near-eastern snake cults, and the grandmother of all serpents, the Babylonian Tiamat. And, of course, Medusa, whose name means ’soverign female wisdom’.

Here’s another traveller’s impression of Shahmaran.

As it turned out, I didn’t buy a picture. I’d already drawn one of my own, the night before, and I figure the Shahmaran won’t mind helping me draw a better one. Whatever the actual origins of the story, I felt that I’d been touched by something well and truly alive.

I shouldn’t neglect to mention the other interesting creature I met that day - the dog of the household, a pure white female, part husky, with one brown eye and one ice blue - truly an otherworldly animal. I’ve stupidly forgotten her name in Turkish, but it meant ‘rice’. (Pilaf? It definitely started with a ‘P’.) Funnily enough, I’d dreamed about David Bowie the night before.

This morning I have coffee at Markiz on Istiklal. Once the favourite spot for the smart set to have their coffee and gateaux, it still has its original sumptuous art nouveau interior, with two tiled panels depicting Spring and Autumn (Summer and Winter didn’t survive the journey from France), leadlight wall-windows with a design of fountains and lilies, and dark wood furniture, it’s a beautiful place. However - there are no croissants this morning; the waiter speaks almost no English (I don’t normally expect this, but Markiz is priced for tourists, so on this occasion I do); my vanilla iced coffee has neither vanilla nor ice in it, and tastes like a plain cup of cold nescaf; the bottom of the glass isn’t wiped; and for some reason best not inquired into it comes with a plastic naked lady swizzle stick that might have migrated from the last Mai Tai I had at Gulliver’s pub on Soi 5 - unnecessary as well as weird, since there was no cream, ice cream or chocolate sauce to be swizzled.
I could have got a better coffee at Gloria Jean’s up the road - and probable a croissant, too. I filled up the questionnaire form supplied with the bill with all of the above - not to be an asshole, but because I’d hate to see Markiz end up as a Starbuck’s.
(No freshly squeezed orange juice, either - not that I mind, as I prefer bottled, but the French couple next to me were a tad disappointed).

Today I’m meeting Amy Spangler, an American translator and literary agent living in Istanbul. She lives on the Asian shore, so I take a ferry across the Bosphorus. The ferry is comfortable and cheap. I arrive early and can’t find much to do, so I get my boots fixed (I had to ditch the walking shoes - I acquired books in Romania and literally couldn’t fit everything in my suitcase, so the shoes and an umbrella had to go).
By now, these poor boots are badly down at heel, and I’ve been looking for a shoe repairer. There are some guys plying that very trade near the ferry terminal. No way to choose between them, so I go to the nearest one. Five lira (about US$4) to fix the heels. Sweet.
When he takes the plastic bit off, he sees that the heels are hollow, then does something really interesting. There are some low scrubby bushes growing in a bed of dirt behind his booth. He starts hacking at one of them and breaks off some wood. Using pliers, he breaks the wood up into thick splinters and stuffs the heels with them, then glues and nails new plastic on. Then - I should have seen this coming - he sands down the rough edges of the trim with a large block, in the process taking half the surface off the leather wrap on the heels. He slaps some brown shoe paint ineffectively over the scars.
I feel unreasonably irate. After all, he did just spend quite a bit of time reinforcing the structural integrity of my footwear - what’s a bit of scuffing? I can pretend I’ve been riding a sandpaper-sided horse, or kickboxing with Steel Wool Man. I’m a bit surly as I pay him, I now regret to say. Sometimes I’m a spoiled bitch. (Actually, it’s probably PMS, but Stu, who has a sure sense for the monthly aspect of my personality, isn’t here to tell me. And I can be a spoiled bitch anytime, anyway.) Sorry, shoe guy. I can’t make it up to you, but I’ll take the next opportunity to do charitable penance.

For some reason I’m expecting Amy to be a middle-aged, very New York Jewish lady. As it turns out, she’s young and from Ohio, and has a fetching blue stud under her lower lip. She kindly treats me to lunch at a cafe with great food, and we chat about the Turkish publishing industry. Amy says book sales are way down. From print runs of 5000, it’s gone down to runs of 1500. I ask why. ‘They killed all the intellectuals,’ she says, ‘back in the 80s and 90s.’ I had no idea this had occurred and am ashamed of my ignorance. Now, she says, Turkey is left with people who don’t read - and has more TV soap operas than anywhere else in the world.
On our way to elsewhere to get coffee, we go past a souvenir shop.
‘Look,’ Amy points. ‘Shahmaran.’
I look. It’s the same picture of the half-woman, half snake that I saw yesterday.
‘That’s her name?’
‘Shahmaran. Queen of the snakes. “Shah” is just the same as shah, the king or queen, “mar” is snake, and “maran” is plural, snakes.”
Amy starts to tell me the story of the Shahmaran’s legend (the ‘h’ is pronounced, so the word is like sha - h - maran, with stress on the first syllable), then decides she doesn’t know it well enough. But her partner Dilik does, so Amy takes me to their apartment.

One of those days. Topkapi palace, former residence of the sultans, is a nice building in the quadrangles-around-gardens style. However, rather than being set up as they might have looked when they were in use, most of the rooms are filled with objects in glass cases, and I quickly found myself dragged down by a sense of surfeit. There’s only so much mindbogglingly ornate silverware, robes and jewellery you can look at before you just want to get out and stare at a nice plain brick wall for a while. I didn’t go into the harem - had no desire to see a place where women were jailed away from the world, however many schemes they managed to put into effect from the inside.

Things I liked: some silver dessert cups, shaped like ornate fruit, on stems in a cluster attached to a fancy base; a set of clear rock crystal pots and jugs; Turkish swords and yataghans (yay!); a European broadsword, which at about 7 ft long was the biggest fucking sword I’ve ever seen - no idea how you’d use it - like a pole arm?; and a little square pavilion with delicate coloured-glass windows all the way around the top of the walls, making it feel like a jewelbox. It might have been the pavilion for circumcision, but I’m not sure. Speaking of circumcision, near the bazaar I saw costumes for the occasion in shops - white suits with robes and crowns. Circumcision is a big deal in Turkey, taking place when a boy is between 7 and 10, marking his entrance into manhood and full participation in the Islamic faith (interestingly, circumcision isn’t mentioned in the Koran). The procedure signifies purification.
And girls? Well, at least according to this book, it’s traditional for a Turkish woman to slap her daughter when she has her first period. I’ve heard the slap is a Jewish tradition, too, to discourage the daughter from ‘being bad’. Is this something we can really blame men for, or do we women turn our claws upon ourselves for some unfathomable fucked-up reason of our own? Go on, treat your son like a little king and treat your daughter like shit - then wonder why he thinks he has the right to start a war some day, and why she has a nervous breakdown.

Sick of the sultans and their loot - including, of all things for a Muslim to steal, the gold cover formerly over the Kaaba stone in Mecca - I headed for Aya Sofya, Church of the Divine Wisdom, with the intention of paying my respects.

On the way, in a souvenir shop, I saw a picture of an interesting monster - or was it a monster? A sort of Lamia-cross-amphiptere, a woman with long black hair and horns, whose body becomes the body of a snake and curls around, creating a two-headed being, half-woman, half-serpent. For legs, she has little snakes. I was intrigued, and nearly bought the picture then and there, but it was rather large and a bit gaudy. Assuming she was a folkloric creature and that I’d be able to find out about her and get a smaller, better picture, or some jewellery in her shape, I left it, and made my way to Aya Sofya.

The outside is grey, rounded, and makes me think of an icecream sundae with a thick layer of dust. Inside, the dome is certainly impressive, but it’s full of scaffolding. And…the Divine Wisdom ain’t here, at least not for me. I can’t feel anything. I begin to suspect she was down in that souvenir shop.
Taking my life in my hands, I creep up the uneven, dangerously steep ramp of smooth, slippery stones (no handrail) to the upper gallery. This time, even the sure-footed old ladies are clinging to the walls. Across the dim distance, there’s a mosaic of Mary, wearing black, holding the infant Jesus. The image is dwarfed by the immense space around it, giving the impression that you’re looking through the wrong end of a telescope.
I somehow manage to get down again, with much cursing, but at least without falling and sliding the whole way on my backside

Down in the foyer there’s a sign advertising an exhibition: Holy Dance of Wood, Marble and Silk!

Holy dance of wood, marble and silk, Batman!

I’m tired, and I don’t think my eyes can stand the sight of more luxurious artefacts. I go back down the streets the way I came, intent on finding Snakewoman and asking the shop owner about her, but the shop is closed. There’s nothing to do but head back to the Buyuk Londra and admire the chandeliers again.

Only two days to go!

Basilica Cistern - built in Byzantine times by the Emperor Justinian: Mireille recommended this to me, and I’m so glad she did. If you ever go to Istanbul, don’t miss it. The entrance is in the square outside Aya Sofya, in a nondescript little brick building that I mistook for a public lavatory until some locals, guessing what I was looking for, told me that this was the way in.

You pay a few Euros, go down some stairs, and emerge into an immense cavern, at least as big as a couple of cathedrals, filled with columns supporting a vaulted ceiling far above your head. The columns stand in shallow water, in which grey carp swim, the only inhabitants of this strange place. The darkness is lit by red lamps, and the red-tinged reflection of pillars and ceiling fades off into blackness where it lies in the water, seemingly going down to a deeper world. It was constructed using columns, capitals and plinths from ruined buildings. You go around a walkway, which takes eventually you past two columns, out of the water, with medusa’s heads on their plinths - one sideways and one upside down.

Of the monuments i saw in Istanbul, this was my hands-down favourite.

I had planned to go into Aya Sofya next, but it was already 4:30 and the upper gallery was closed. I was so late because, between the Grand Bazaar and the Cistern, I’d been waylaid by an extremely handsome young man - or boy; he looked about 16 - who approached me with the standard line about wanting to offer me tea and ‘Turkish Hospitality’.
‘And what kind of shop will this hospitality take place in?’ I asked a little wearily.
Handsome boy looks thoughtful: ‘An art gallery.’
Do I have ‘I’m a sucker for art galleries’ written on my forehead? Is he telepathic? I buy it, and agree to have a look.
We arrive.
‘Here it is.’
‘It’s a carpet shop.’
‘Well, carpets are a kind of art, aren’t they?’
I tell him, gently but firmly, that he’s wasting his time. He’s welcome to give me tea, but I really don’t want any carpets. I truly don’t want to waste his time, but he insists, and as I’d quite like a glass of tea and a place to sit down, I let him go ahead.

What he tells me about carpets is interesting. Village girls make them and present them to their husbands when they get married, as dowry - so it’s still the girl’s property. As the carpet gets older it increases in value. If a woman hangs onto a carpet for a long time, she can sell it for quite a bit. HB says the girls weave into the carpets whatever they’re feeling and thinking about, and all the motifs on the carpets have meanings. One is a spider, signifying protection, because of a legend in which a spider wove a web across a cave where the Prophet Muhammed was hiding. A pattern of five squares signifies the five Muslim prayer times, indicating that the girl is religious - or was feeling religious when she made the carpet. A pattern of interlocking triangles means tents, referring to nomadic ancestry. A pattern like repeated ‘S’ shapes means love.
‘Village girls are very shy,’ says HB. ‘They can’t say “I love you”, so they put it in a carpet.’
I wonder at the different meanings of love. It’s too bad that English only has one word for it - really surprising, in a language with such a huge lexicon. They still have arranged marriages in these villages - one method of arrangement being for the old ladies to go around looking at girls’ carpets and choose a girl for their boy based on her work. I didn’t think to ask HB if the boy has to do anything to indicate his own quality. Anyway, I wonder what the meaning of this ‘S’ love is: A willingness to be a working partnership? The hope for a protective, kind husband? An earnest wish for a complete studmuffin who’ll dance the night away? Presumably not sexual attraction, if she hasn’t met the guy before - but then, it may signify attraction to *someone*, real or imaginary.I’d like to really quiz HB about this, but he’s moving on to the sales pitch. He does a great job of pretending not to understand why I don’t want any carpets. ‘If you see water, don’t you want to drink?’ His dark eyes plead. ‘If you see food, don’t you want to eat?’
‘Not if I’m not thirsty or hungry.’ He can’t possibly know what I’ve been through at the hands of Moroccan carpet salesmen, or that I simply don’t like being sold things. I like to find objects of interest unexpectedly, or else hunt them down. But when they’re laid out in front of me with a salesperson extolling their merits, they lose whatever mystery or suprise they might have held for me if I’d been left alone with them.
In any case, I really don’t want a carpet. HB looks as melancholy as Hamlet, but shakes my hand gravely and bids me a courteous farewell. I find myself hoping that he locates someone who does want to buy a carpet before the day is done.

not holding hands with another man. I think.Next day, I wander down the steep cobblestone street (yes, another one) to the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn. My first stop is the Spice Bazaar, a small market in an old building, where, predictably, spices are sold, along with tea, turkish delight, dried fruit and nuts, as well as lamps and scarves and other touristy things. I’d really like one or several of those lamps, but you need the right place for them - ideally a house with high ceilings and ceiling roses, or one with brick walls and wooden beams. They’d be wasted in our no-frills 1970s flat, anyway.

What I do find are dried apricots without sulphur dioxide preservative, which I’m allergic to. Since I love dried apricots and normally just can’t eat them, I’m happy. They taste exactly the same as the sulphured ones, the only difference being that they’re brown instead of orange. Don’t tell me they put that stuff on them just make them orange. Ok, brown isn’t such a pretty colour, but dates and chocolate and coffee and nutella are all brown, so couldn’t dried apricots be too? The man I buy them from asks me where I come from and what I do. I tell him I’m a writer. He says he’s always wanted to be a writer, and recommends a couple of Middle Eastern authors to me.

On and up the hill, through the veritable cliched labyrinth of cobbled streets, to the Grand Bazaar, which is basically a shopping mall in a big, lovely old building with vaulted ceilings. It’s more for tourists than locals: it’s full of carpet shops, lamp shops, gold shops and leather shops. The touts still go after you, but in a much more laid back way than in Cairo, which is what I was afraid it was going to be like. You actually can just wander around and enjoy yourself here. Highest points go to the energetic young man who offered to be my second husband and cook for Stu and me (and who also said he wanted to write). I told Stu that I supposed he’d prefer a Thai girl if we were going to have a concubine, and he gallantly said we could have his & hers. Lowest points to the guy in the book bazaar (which is just outside the Grand Bazaar and dates from Byzantine times) who caressed my shoulders, pinched my cheek - yech! - and showed me some exquisitely painted Indian miniature dirty pictures. ‘This is my favourite,’ he said, indicating one where they’re doing it doggie style. ‘They look so happy.’ He suggests we meet in the evening and ‘do something’. Refraining from saying that I already had an engagement with a dobermann, I told him that as I was married I must refuse.

Next time: the super-great Basilica Cistern, and a free lecture on Anatolian carpets.