This is one of the best city in the world to be lost, Istanbul has so many of the characteristic of lostness; a blue haze both falling from avbove and rising from the waters between Europe and Asia, a feeling akin to sadness (huzun or melancholia) but a cool invigorating morning air; the oxymoron, finding where to get lost; a loss of direction, and the call to prayer; the recollection of the loss of memory, no cleverness but contradiction, Rebecca Solnit described it so.
Notebook for Thursday October 26th: Agenda. The day began in a state of lostness, and the decision was to walk in the direction of the city walls aiming to reach the church whose name that could not be remembered, another museum, and following the road that lead straight to the west, walking along broad pavements accompanied by the other walkers of the city, walkers whose pace was similar, suitable for one to two hours walking.
Mosaics in gold. Ikons. The face of an identifiable Christ, and the 8-sided cross in the corner dome.
After visiting the church, a shower of rain forced shelter under a grimy arch through the old city walls, an old soot blackened gate, the Ottoman seals of conquest barely discernable in the key stones, the new accompanying the old, the gate alongside the restored parts of the city walls, then the glistening road leading downwards towards the Sea of Marmaris.
– Danger, he said. The young man, perhaps a student, had emerged from nowhere. A meeting on the damp road, gestures of a desire to continue. – Danger, he repeated, so that it was necessary to retrace our steps and go another way.