In Europe

dolphins before the bow, white foam behind, no-man's-land.

Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
Istanbul
    FROM ANCIENT TIMES CONSTANTINOPLE WAS THE HINGE BETWEEN East and West, the final bulwark of the Roman Empire, the wealthiest metropolis between London and Peking, the terminus of the Chinese silk route, the advance beacon of Europe.
    And today?
    From the Black Sea, the first thing one sees are the green hills of Kilyos, behind them the elegant houses and gardens where Irfan Orga once spent the last, light summer of his childhood, and amid them the modern suburbs of Istanbul, lying in folds across the hillsides like cotton wool. We are sailing into the Bosphorus. The villas glide by left and right, one more extravagant than the other, with carved wooden balconies, stoops and terraces looking out on the water, brightly coloured gardens, trees, a village square, a minaret, a little wharf, a few cafés, a beach.
    It is 7 a.m., but the sun is already hot. We pass a tiny fishing boat, the nets half spread in the water, three tanned and weathered men wave to the girls on the
Passat
. The great bridge between Europe and Asia lies in the distance, a flimsy thread being crossed by hundred of bugs and beetles.
    We approach the heart of the city. I have said so before: here, time obviously stopped in 1948. The dozens of ferries full of fathers with briefcases and mothers with shopping, the rusty, worldly-wise freighters from Sebastopol, Odessa and Piraeus, the bright-red tugs, the oil fumes, the glistening water: everything exudes the spirit of work and trade, no frills.
    The European part of the city resembles old Barcelona, except for the occasional, echoing call to prayer. The markets are full of shouts and aromas, the stalls overflowing with milk and honey, bulging with herbs,chicken and fish, with cherries the size of plums, plums the size of apples, with vegetables of a thousand varieties. On Istiklal Caddesi, boys surf on the bumper of an old tram, their feet sliding over the rails. In the middle of the day, loudspeakers everywhere issue the call to prayer. This is Muslim country, yes, but the baroque shopping gallery where I have lunch could just as easily be Brussels, or Milan. Istanbul, like Odessa, is an amalgamated city, a city that must come to terms with all these different identities, without choosing one or the other.
    I stay at the Pera Palas, an antique hotel built in 1892 as an extension of the Orient Express, a cool resting place after the exhausting train trip through the Balkans. The building breathes a nostalgic chic, an ancient lift creaks up and down all day, right through the middle of the stairwell. Gold and marble glisten in the immense halls. In the big, flaking bathrooms you can sit on the same toilet as Greta Garbo, stare out of the same window as Empress Sissi of Austria, and lie in the same bed as King Zog of Albania. The TV is turned up loudly in the room where Trotsky slept: 204.
    The loveliest suite here is held eternally for Mustafa Kemal Paşsa – known from 1934 as Kemal Atatürk, the ‘father of all Turks’. A porter takes me by the hand, lets me peek around the door. It is a small, silent sanctuary: a bed, a bathroom, two easy chairs, a desk with a couple of photographs and some papers. So this was the Istanbul pied-à-terre of the military dictator, this hero of the First World War who reined in the chaos of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, drove out the foreign occupiers and led the country powerfully and energetically into the modern age.
    In the 1920s and 1930s, Atatürk was able to impose secularisation simply by decree, an unparalleled revolution in the Islamic world: women were no longer allowed to wear veils, men no longer the fez, polygamy was banned, women were given the vote, the Islamic lunar calendar was replaced with the Gregorian, the Arabic script with the Roman alphabet. Instead of Islamic law, Swiss law was adopted, almost word for word, Sunday became the official day of rest, all Koran schools were closed and Islam was to respect all secular legislation.
    In recent decades the father of the fatherland has been honoured more than ever, despite – or perhaps because of – the country's new Islamisation.One statue after another was raised, his portrait hung in every café and classroom. He was seen as the symbol of the great leap forward, the containment of the power of the believers, the definitive break with the ‘sick man of Europe’, as the Ottoman Empire was once called.