Month: October 2017

A recent Guardian newspaper article about efforts to expand Saudi Arabia’s economy identified one of the obstacles – the disinclination of young Saudis to work hard. This is due in part to the country’s oil wealth and its ability to hire foreign workers for jobs Saudis would rather not do. But I am inclined to think an indifference to work is also rooted in the culture. Not just of Saudi Arabia, but of the entire region. The protestant work ethic of northern Europe does not, as far as I know, have an historical equivalent in the muslim culture of the Middle East.

I can’t say the virtue of work is unappreciated in the muslim world. I don’t know about that. An antipathy to hard graft seems evident in many of the world’s hot climate regions. On the other hand, in Turkey I discovered an appreciation for idleness that is utterly foreign to “western” culture.

In Istanbul I was invited to a Nargile cafe. A nargile, or shisha, is a hookah pipe. Smoking shisha is an everyday pasttime for many Turks. The tobacco used for shisha is flavoured – in our case apple-flavoured – and each smoker is given a removable plastic mouthpiece to use for their turn at the pipe. I haven’t smoked tobacco since I was ten and at that time found it too foul-tasting to endure. Shisha, however, is not like that at all. I inhaled deeply and felt a warm, gentle infusion of apple enter my body. Reclining on cushions in the shade of trees at an outdoor cafe with people all around; it was an entirely pleasant experience. We spent most of an afternoon talking and smoking and enjoying the social scene of others doing the same. It felt decadent and somehow wrong to my protestent sensibilities to spend an afternoon doing nothing but lounge about. I had to resist the temptation to look at my watch and to think of other, more productive, things I could be doing. Eventually I just ignored the little voice in my head and gave in to the simple pleasure of it all.

The Turks have a word for this kind of pursuit: Keyif, the art of idle relaxation. Making an art form of idleness is definitely not part of my cultural heritage. But when in Istanbul… do what the Istanbullus do.

Part of the seduction of Keyif is the refinement that has been brought to such idle pleasures as smoking shisha. It comes from a culture many hundreds of years in the making, developed in a pleasant place with a gentle climate where many generations of people have lived, loved, and had families. The patterns of life here are stamped into the cobblestones of the ancient alleyways and etched in the faces of the old and the merchants of the bazaars. There is a depth and richness to daily life in an old city like Istanbul that is missing in North American cities. With our fixation on economic growth, productivity and efficiency we have lost the ability to appreciate the simple pleasure of idle relaxation.

As one of the most visited cities in the world, it should be no surprise that Istanbul has a lot of hotels.  On the main avenues are all the usual big chains, but the narrow, winding and cobbled side streets of the touristy areas offer something different – an incredible range of little hotels and hostels.

 

Alternating with these in equal number are the carpet shops. And that brings me to Ahmed.

I met Ahmed as I was leaving Hagia Sophia, the massive Byzantine basilica-turned-mosque-turned-museum. This is perhaps Istanbul’s most famous tourist location, and a perfect spot for enterprising young Turks to engage foreign visitors in a quick bit of lively conversation as a prelude to offering a visit to their carpet shop.

But Ahmed was different from the other touts. When he saw I wasn’t going to take up his offer to look at carpets he surprised me by asking, “Are you interested in philosophy?” And then, “Who’s your favourite philosopher?”

We spent the next half hour walking and talking philosophy. Ahmed left school at 12, but has read widely and is a self-taught “scholar” on the subject. (His favourite philosopher is Spinoza.)  I was utterly charmed, and when he asked again about visiting his shop it seemed churlish to say no.

At the carpet shop I was offered tea and lunch while Ahmed and I carried on our conversation about the big questions of life. After lunch he led me to the shop’s carpet expert who spent the next hour educating me about carpets in general and the unique qualities of Turkish carpets in particular. We looked at many carpets.

After making my purchase – yes, I bought a particularly fine, hand-knotted runner that will (I trust) look perfect in the front hall – Ahmed rejoined me and offered to take me to a place for tea and Nargile, or “shisha.”

Ahmed has a warm, easy-going and charismatic personality. As we walk through the touristy Sultanahmet district he is constantly greeted by shopkeepers at storefronts along the way.

Sitting at an outdoor café under the shade of a great leafy tree Ahmed told me his story. He was born in the Anatolia Continue reading “Ahmed the carpet tout”

I have been reading a book about Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s Nobel laureate. Pamuk has lived all his life in the city. In fact he lives today in the apartment building he grew up in, which was built with his grandfather’s money to provide gracious housing in one of the city’s best neighbourhoods for the extended Pamuk family.

Pamuk’s perception of Istanbul takes in the long decline and eventual fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s and the subsequent dereliction and decay of its many former glories. He describes the city and its inhabitants as drenched in huzun – a Turkish word meaning deep melancholy – for the lost stature of their once proud and powerful city and its many storied inhabitants.

Pamuk wrote Istanbul in 2004, and it seems evident to me the city was quite different then from how it is now. He describes a place where, after decades of neglect and disinterest, nothing works properly and all has been left to rot. The majestic ancient fountains are dry, the ornate mansions of pashas and viziers are crumbling and being torn down for banal new concrete apartment buildings, and the Istanbulus have lost their pride.

From my brief time in Istanbul I don’t see much of Pamuck’s huzun in the city or its people. In fact it appears to be a quite prosperous place. In the city’s squares the public fountains are indeed working, the metro system is modern and efficient, the museums are excellent and the people certainly don’t look downcast or unhappy. A tourist brochure boasts Istanbul is the eighth most visited city in the world, although European tourism has declined signficantly since last year, when ISIS set off a bomb in Taksim Square in the centre of the city.

Istanbul today is obviously very different from the city it once was. In Napoleon’s time, for example, the great French general ventured that if all the world were one nation Istanbul would be its capital. I don’t know if Pamuk today still finds his city and its citizens infected with huzun. To my eyes it seems much too dynamic for that.  As a visitor from a cold climate city where half the year is lived under the dreary gloom of slate grey skies, I’m well acquainted with melancholy. But I don’t see much glumness in the faces of the Istanbulus.