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.