The final section of the Imperial Procession was made up of the Fools, Mimics, Distillers, and Tavern-Keepers. The lowly place of the Tavern-Keepers in the procession was a reflection of the Moslem prohibition of wine, but the large numbers by which the publicans were represented tell us that the Stamboullu enjoyed his drink as much in Evliya’s day as in our own. As Evliya writes of the Tavern-Keepers: ‘There are in the four jurisdictions of Constantinople one thousand places of misrule, kept by Greeks, Armenians and Jews. Though wine was prohibited by the Koran, yet as the Ottoman Empire is great and mighty there is an Inspector of Wine, whose establishment is at the Iron Gate in Galata. Whoever says Galata says taverns, because they are as numerous there as at Leghorn and Malta. The word Gumrah (Seducing from the Road) is most particularly to be applied to the taverns of Galata, because there all kinds of playing and dancing boys, mimics and fools flock together and delight themselves day and night.’ And so we learn that Galata, too, has not changed since Evliya’s time.

Although Galata was governed for centuries by the Genoese (who called themselves the Magnificent Community of Pera), it was never an exclusively Italian town. There was a considerable Greek population in Galata even before the Conquest, and in the century afterwards this was augmented by Turks, Greeks and Armenians from Asia Minor and by Sephardic Jews and Moors from Spain. In addition there were the hordes of seamen, merchants and adventurers who came sailing into the port from all over the Mediterranean and stayed to settle in the waterfront districts along the Golden Horn. And so, in Ottoman times Galata became one of the most heterogeneous towns in Europe and probably the liveliest and most corrupt. We sense this from Evliya’s description of the Galatiotes of his time:

It is no wonder, then, that Galata became the most colourful and rambunctious town in the whole Mediterranean. The port quarter was especially notorious for its tavernas, as we can see from this lively description by Evliya Efendi:

Another sang:

But never fear, our good friend Evliya Efendi was not led astray by the licentious behaviour of the Galatiotes. For, as he hastens to assure us:

For this you have our deepest gratitude, Evliya, dear friend!

The aftermath of drink was as serious a problem in Evliya’s day as in our own, and hangovers in old Galata must have been quite homeric. Then, as now, one of the favourite remedies for those who had been struck down by wine was işkembe çorbası, or tripe soup. Here is Evliya Efendi’s description of the tripe soup-sellers of Galata as they pass by in the procession of the guilds:

The tripe soup-shops still line the waterfront along the Bosphorus in Galata, ministering to the hangovers of Stamboul tipplers as they have for centuries past.

It is clear that our friend Evliya had a great affection for the intemperate infidels of Galata. Before he left there to wander on to other quarters of Istanbul he paid this parting compliment to the lively Galatiotes: ‘The fair sex of this town are celebrated. The inhabitants possess something of the nature of dervishes and in wintertime entertain good company. The women are modest and fair.’

Ah, but they are nearly all gone now, Evliya, and Galata is not what it was in your day. The wars and upheavals of the present century have scattered the Galatiotes and their old town is no longer so mad and rambunctious as it was in the past. The last to go were the Greeks, who were raising hell in Galata up until a few years ago, but now most of those have departed too, except for a few forlorn survivors. And so now the streets of Galata are quiet at night for the first time in a thousand years, and after the müezzin has proclaimed the occasion of evening prayer the lights go out along both banks of the Golden Horn. One evening I was sitting in an empty taverna in Galata, discussing this sad situation with my friend, Barba Andreas the guitarist. ‘Where have all the Galatiotes gone, Barba Andreas?’ I said, looking around the deserted room. ‘Eh!’ he replied, ‘some are dead, some have fled, and the rest have moved to Pera.’ So to Pera we went, then, Barba Andreas and I, to find the lost Galatiotes.

We walked up though the dark, squalid alleyways of Galata, along the Street of Nafi of the Golden Hair, the Alley of the Lonely, and the Street of the Noble Poet. Below us we could see the light of the Galata Bridge and of the kayıks and ferry boats tied up around it, but across the Golden Horn in Stamboul and below us in Galata the town was completely dark. Here and there in the dismal streets through which we passed Andreas pointed out the tavernas where he had played in the old days; Paniyoti’s, Niko’s, Costaki’s and the Labyrinthos, where, it is said, one could hire a pirate crew to board a ship or sack a town. But now the tavernas were all silent and empty as if the Galatiotes had never sung or danced there. Soon we were up in the bright and crowded streets of Pera, among the throngs heading for the modern cafés and theatres and cinemas. I knew that those for whom we were looking would not be found in such places, and so I was pleased when Andreas turned off the main avenue and began walking downhill again into the darkness. We were on the Street of the Postmen and we were headed towards the only light in sight, a dim blue lamp which was hanging over a doorway halfbelow the street level. ‘Hristaki’s’, said Andreas, and as we approached the place I could hear the twanging of a bouzoukia and the nasal lyrics of a Greek love song. We opened the door and walked in. The music stopped, a dozen heads turned to stare at us, and a thin little Greek halted in his solo dance, poised in mid-step with his arms spread as if he were hovering in flight, like an eagle soaring over a mountain meadow. But then they realised that the intruders were friends; they shouted greetings to us, the music resumed where it had left off, and the dancer whirled on through the remaining flights of his zeybeki. Hristaki and his friends asked us to sit down and have a drink with them. Andreas thanked them but explained that we were looking for some of our old friends from Galata and asked Hristaki if he knew where they were tonight. ‘Eh!’ said Hristaki, ‘if they are not in my place they must be either in Leftero’s or in Boem, for where else could one go these days.’ And so we said good-night to Hristaki and his friends and left.

We walked down the Street of the Theatre through the fish-market to Leftero’s. We found there a few old men playing tavla under the grape-arbor outside the taverna, while inside a lonely drunken Greek was singing to himself. The Greek interrupted his song long enough to tell us that life was so dull in the taverna that evening that Leftero and his friends had gone off to a livelier place. This could only be Boem, for that was the only other taverna left in town, and surely our friends would be there too. And so we walked back up through the fish-market, stopping briefly in the Passage of Flowers to have a giant draught of beer and to ask after the health of our drink-doomed friend, the Albanian Flower-Pedlar, and then on to the Taverna Boem.

The Taverna Boem is located on a little cobbled alley known as the Street of the Bright Child, just a few yards down from the main avenue in Pera. It is identified only by a dim lamp on which is written in peeling letters the simple legend, BOEM. One could spend a lifetime in this town and remain unaware of Boem’s existence, passing it by like ten thousand other insignificant doorways. Since my first visit to Boem with Andreas I have spent at least a hundred evenings there, which I count among the most enjoyable hours of my life. And every time I walk through the door and push aside the old-fashioned drapes, I feel the same excitement that I did on my first visit with Andreas, for the lost Galatiotes are always to be found there; Greeks, Turks, Italians, Jews, French, Albanians and whatever other race or nationality that has found its way to this Babel of a town. The important quality of a Galatiote was never his nationality anyway, and who could be sure of that in such a swarming town as this. Whatever his race or passport, the Galatiote was always distinguished by his zest for life. And so Boem is always filled with Galatiotes.

Andreas held the drapes aside for me and I walked into Boem for the first time. Entering from the dark and silent street outside, I was not at all prepared for the sudden and almost overwhelming blast of noise which greeted me, for the whole room throbbed with the sound of laughing and singing, the clink of glasses and bottles, the roar of customers for more food and drink and the hysterical shouts of waiters trying to get it for them. The entire room and the balcony above were packed to overflowing with crowded tables of men and women and even a few children, all swaying together in disorganised and inebriated song. On the cramped little stage in the corner a four-piece band was trying to make itself heard above the din; they were just finishing the last verses of Samiotissa, that lovely old song of the Aegean islands. There was ancient, sad-faced Monsieur Popoff, who has been sawing away on his fiddle in this taverna for more than fifty years; gracious Madame Tashkin, who has been here nearly as long, playing her broken-down piano in this rowdy place just as if she were still on the concert stage in old St Petersburg; Costa the accordionist, who looks up and smiles as if he were sweetly dreaming in paradise; and there at the microphone, throwing his guitar up into the air as he sings the last verses of that joyous island song, is none other than the great Todori Negroponte, who for longer than anyone can remember has been the finest of all the singers and players in Galata and Pera. Todori finishes the song and then looks around and smiles at Madame Tashkin, and receives smiles himself from sad old Popoff and sweet Costa. Then they nod to each other like conspirators and begin the first mad notes of Barba Yani. And who are those two wild dancers who have just come out on to the floor, that dionysian acrobat with the grey moustache and flashing eyes now leaping into the air and whirling in pirouettes around the voluptuous little roly-poly lady who is undulating in a maddening belly-dance? Why it’s Dimitri and Calliope and they are waving at us to join them! Calliope shouts ‘Ella!’ and waves her handkerchief; the evening drinkers stagger from their tables and form in weaving line behind her as she leads them around and around the floor and up to the balcony and down again and once more around the reverberating room, while Todori throws his guitar high up into the smoke-filled air and sings yet another verse of the crazy adventures of Barba Yani. If the law allowed, they would never stop and Calliope would lead them out the door and down the avenues of Pera to their old haunts in Galata, where they would make the cobbled alleys echo with their singing as they did for so many centuries in the past. For they are the old Galatiotes, the last of that magnificent community.