‘… and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.’
W. B. YEATS
For a long time he had been trying to go to Byzantium. He had started the journey many times. For twenty years, he had been setting out at the same time of year. But whenever he set out the journey always became complicated. On one occasion he found himself in another city without knowing how he got there. The journeys took on a life of their own. They took him not where he wanted to go, but where the journeys themselves wanted.
The desire to go to Byzantium represented to him something of an impossibility. Every year he would get out his maps and study all the routes by which to get there. He dreamt of long train journeys, considered walking, and was even tempted to try the obscure method of being borne there by birds. Nothing seemed too excessive for accomplishing a task that fate had made difficult.
The years passed and the journey had not been made. He had amassed a collection of photographs and drawings, paintings and lithographs and engravings. He had read poems and travel journals, sought out travellers’ tales and ancient legends. He had approached Byzantium as one approaches the stories of a famed kingdom beyond seven mountains. Only rare travellers return from it with gold-rimmed eyes. He had approached, but had been unable to find the gate by which to enter.
Every poem he had read about it was a closed castle, every drawing a hieroglyph, and each traveller’s tale a riddle. He had begun to think that Byzantium existed in a separate world, a world of blue dragons and topaz lions.
He had kept his hopes for this journey to himself. He never demeaned his dream by telling it to anyone. Byzantium was his secret destination. He felt in some ways that it was his destiny.
Many years ago he had actually received an invitation to go to Byzantium. It was as if fate wanted to tempt him with that which he sought but could not have. He was invited to be on a panel of image-interpreters. The letter of invitation had puzzled him. Its formality, its circuitous language, made it seem as if it were addressed not to an individual, but to a group. He responded to the letter diligently and awaited a reply. A date had been given for the conference, which was to take place in the ancient capital, on the shores of the Bosphorus.
He thought that at last the closed gate of his dream was beginning to open, that the fates had been appeased. He had fallen under the spell of an ancient legend. There is a place that each person cannot go to. And if they do, a mysterious fate awaits them. Everyone has a Paris inaccessible to them, a Rome they will never arrive at, a forbidden Lagos. The key to that place is held by one of the three sisters of fate.
The invitation seemed a sign that the key had been turned in its lock. He dreamt of white swans on the bright river. Once he dreamt of a black swan and awoke perplexed. What might happen to him now the spell was broken?
Places that we have failed to get to exert a profound fascination. It could be the next village, a museum in the city, an alleyway just off your street. Or a letter one is waiting for that never arrives.
That they never replied to his letter, or that their reply got lost in the post, only confirmed that the key opening the door of his destiny had not really been turned. He waited weeks, then months, for a response. He wrote several times. He heard nothing. It was as if fate were playing a game with his fondest hopes. But the game fate played only deepened his desire.
Desire increases in direct proportion to obstacles preventing its fulfilment. Some might think that the desire is the obstacle. None of this crossed his mind. When the opportunity to visit Byzantium faded, he went back to making plans, studying maps, and consulting ancient books in libraries about the weather there. Byzantium became a living place in his imagination. Is there anything more real than what we have created in our minds, with all the power of our imagination and ignorance?
Every day he went to this place that was on the margins of his mind. This place existed alongside his daily work, his everyday tasks. At night he inhabited this realm. He dwelled in its markets and its mosques, its parks and its cathedrals. He wandered on the roads that led to the river. The muted evening light over the city and the eastern origins of its language became his constant delight.
All he had to do was shut his eyes and he was there again. It was what he looked forward to most. For months he lived like this, in the two realms. His daily life meant less to him than his dream life. As his daily life grew more confined, this dream life acquired more liberty. Slowly he became a shadow in the city where he lived. The world ceased to notice him. He passed into daily insubstantiality. But in his dreams he acquired form and body and freedom.
He developed growing mastery of this secret domain. As he lost the city of the day, he gained the city of his dreams.
One day he had gone for a walk in his neighbourhood, along the canal, in west London. It was an unusually cold day and at the end of the walk he had taken refuge in a café. At that time of day the café was usually empty. Steam from a coffee machine misted the windows. He took a seat near a window and stared out into the misty world. He liked the world misty. He liked the world unclear.
While he had been sitting there, his mind empty, a man had come into the café and taken a seat at the table next to him. After a while the man addressed him, in a voice that had the hollow quality of a cave.
‘I see that you like the world misty,’ he said.
‘I do.’
‘Too much reality, eh?’
‘The world seems unreal.’
‘What is real for you?’
‘Far-off places that I cannot get to, dreams more real than fire.’
‘So you too are haunted by unattainable dreams?’
He turned to look properly at the stranger. He noted the darkness of his eyes and the strangeness of his dress. He wore a blue-red robe and a gold fringed turban and white shoes that curved upwards at the tip. He seemed like one who had come from a place where the air is of fire and where the eyes see nothing but stone. His face was hard and sculpted like rocks in wild places. From his robe came the elusive odour of the desert and of eastern marketplaces. From his eyes came the hint of unpredictability.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I recognise the curse of those who are trapped in their dreams.’
‘How can you recognise it? What do you do? Who are you that you can say such things?’
The stranger was silent. He had the air of a wandering magician. He could even have been a wizard. It was those piercing eyes. They saw through illusion. The stranger laughed. He had good teeth.
‘What I do does not matter.’
‘What matters then?’
The stranger smiled, got up, and with deliberate motions put on his white gloves. Then he left without another word. When the stranger left, the mood of the café was different. It was muggier than before.
He sat at the window, no longer looking out. The window was no longer misted.
Every now and then we meet someone who seems to have the solution to that which perplexes us. We sense they have the solution even before they have spoken. It is as if they are the key that the universe has sent us. He sensed from their only meeting that the stranger might be his key.
He went back to the same café, and sat at the same window, hoping to meet the stranger again. He had many questions for him. He waited at the same place, and at the same time, for weeks. Before he sat down and ordered his cup of tea, he knew he would not see the stranger that day. Each day he knew it. He knew it sometimes by the shapes that formed on the misted windows. Sometimes he knew it from the vacant mood of the café, even when the café was full.
It is said that certain people, with the force of their charisma, change the mood in a room. They don’t have to be important. They might appear insignificant. Do certain people foreshadow their arrival? Even the most sceptical people, going for a walk, have sometimes had the sense of a friend they have not seen for a long time. They turn a corner and there, at a bus stop, stands the friend. Do we sometimes sense people before we meet them?
Each day he knew by the mood of the café that the stranger would not appear.
Weeks went past in this way. The world changed quietly. The headlines on the newspapers spoke of distant wars that were creeping closer. One headline started a mild disturbance in him all day. They were setting up a colony on Mars. One hundred people had been chosen for a one-way journey to the red planet. On the day he read the news story he was at the café, staring through the misted window, nursing a cup of tea.
He had a sudden feeling. When he looked up, the mood of the café had changed. There was a blue quiver in the air. He sensed but could not see it.
At the next table sat the stranger. He was wearing white gloves. There was a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were looking beyond the veil of the world.
He had not seen the stranger come in, and had not noticed when he sat down.
‘Are you still haunted?’ the stranger said in a dry voice.
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so.’
‘Why?’
‘Unreality makes the world.’
‘Unreality?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought reality made the world.’
The stranger smiled. Deep grooves appeared on his face. An uncanny light shone in his eyes.
‘Unreality makes reality.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You have not understood the power of your dreams or the gift of your obstacles,’ the stranger said, a dark gleam in his eyes. ‘If fate shuts a door on you, it is because it wants you to find a greater one. The normal door you want to pass through is not for you. Every obstacle presents us with a magical solution.’
The stranger paused. There was a momentary silence in the café, as if everyone were listening.
‘You have been defeated by reality,’ said the stranger, after a while. ‘The only way to defeat reality is with unreality.’
‘How do I do that?’
The stranger was no longer listening. Now he had the solemn face of a tribesman of the steppes.
‘If you will trust me implicitly,’ he said, ‘I will show you the power of your dreams.’
‘You have my implicit trust. I am at the end of my tether. I will try anything.’
‘Good,’ the stranger said, leaning forward. ‘Now look into my eyes. While looking think of what you dream about most.’
He looked and felt the world about him dissolving.
‘Deep in my eyes you will see a flame and a sword. You must choose one. If you choose the sword, wield it. If the fire, hold it aloft.’
He looked deep into the stranger’s eyes. He saw a sword and a flame.
‘Have you chosen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Reveal your choice to no one.’
‘Not even to you?’
‘Not even to me.’
‘All right.’
‘Now go home and we will see what happens.’
When he blinked, the world was misty. When the mist cleared, the stranger was gone. There wasn’t even a cup on the table where he had been sitting.
He went home and read. He felt out of sorts. He felt a little unlike himself for the rest of the day. It was a feeling he couldn’t get rid of. In the evening a curious malaise stole into his limbs. He went for a walk to try and shake it.
The edges of buildings, flocks of birds, the spikes of metal fences, quivered lightly in his vision. Back home the corners of the room bothered him. It seemed to expand in ways that were impossible. That night, unusually for him, he fell into a sudden deep sleep. He had hardly touched his head to the pillow when he was encompassed by the dark.
Next morning he woke in an alien bed. The room was new to him. He had the curious feeling of having been transported to a world that was mildly familiar. The walls of the room were of a dazzling whiteness. On the wall opposite him there were two floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Between them was a large slender television. There was a white chaise longue near the bed. The ceiling was fretted with a simple abstract design composed of intersecting lines.
A woman was working on a small black computer on the solid mahogany table. She was beautiful, in an unfamiliar way.
‘Who are you?’ he said, raising himself on the pillow.
The curtains were still drawn and a soft darkness pervaded the room. The oblique light of dawn crept round the edges of the curtain.
‘Darling, you’re up?’ The woman smiled at him. ‘You have been sleeping now for twelve hours. I didn’t want to trouble you.’
‘But who are you?’
‘Darling, stop playing silly games. What are we going to do today?’
She had stopped working on the computer. She stared at him with cool eyes. He decided to go along with the pretence for a while. He studied the woman. She had red hair, full breasts, was not young and was not old. When he looked across at what she was doing he saw, to his surprise, that she had begun to fill out the spaces of a drawing. She sketched the shape of a minaret, with people in the background, and pine trees scattered in a small park.
‘You’re an artist?’
‘Of course I am, silly. What’s wrong with you today?’
‘Where are we?’
She stared at him hard. She stared at him a long time. From her gaze he perceived that if he continued like this she might consider something drastic. He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes, to give the impression that he was the victim of a persistent sleep.
‘We’re in Istanbul,’ she said, concluding her long scrutiny. ‘Do you remember now?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said lightly, frowning. ‘Istanbul, you say?’
‘Yes, dear, Istanbul.’ She gave him another look. ‘What shall we do today?’
‘If we are in Istanbul, where are we staying?’
‘You are being strange today. You must be tired. Or forgetful. I hope you’re not going to get worse. Raffles, dear. We’re in Raffles. You chose it. Maybe you need a bit more sleep.’
He hid beneath the sheets. He passed from thought into sleep. When he woke, the curtains were drawn back and he saw a distant river. He got out of bed and went to the window. It was an excellent view. He could see a long bridge and on the other side houses on a sloping hill. The houses were white and ranged with charming symmetry. Their red-tiled roofs made a fine pattern.
On the lower terraces of the tower next door there were the last traces of snow. As he looked across the city he saw snow on rooftops and on lawns.
He turned away from the window. The woman was still drawing at the table. He went past her to the bathroom. The floor and walls were of marble. There was a bath and a separate shower and a large clear mirror over the washbasins. The doors were of smoky glass.
‘Did you know we have our own butler?’ the woman called out from the other room.
He contemplated answering but decided on silence.
‘Well, we do. She’s very nice.’
He had a quick shower while pondering the luxury of having a personal butler in a hotel. As he dried himself it occurred to him to ask whether he had any clothes with him. It was all so strange that he had no idea what he had and what he hadn’t. He came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Outside the bathroom door he saw a closet. In the closet were open suitcases. In one he recognised his own clothes. There were also shirts and coats on hangers, and on the floor his favourite old slippers. He put on black corduroy trousers and a blue shirt and went back into the room.
‘This came earlier,’ the woman said, handing him a note.
The note was from the concierge. He was due to meet one of the hotel staff at 11 a.m. to go through an itinerary of places he wanted to visit in the city. All this was new to him. He looked across at a clock on the bedside table. It was 9.10 a.m. In that same glance he saw the stack of books he had been reading at home. It reassured him to see them. Made him feel less unmoored.
‘Shall we go down to breakfast, dear? I’m starving.’
The woman stood up and put a wrap round her shoulders. She picked up a black handbag and keycard. He followed her mutely. Outside, there was a finely wrought table on which was a brass bowl. It looked valuable, like an antique. There were paintings all along the walls and the floor was of marble. Hanging from the ceiling was a cocoon of pearls forming intricate curves.
‘You could wear that as a dress,’ the woman said, admiring the exotic chandelier.
The lift arrived and they got in. He stood at a distance from her, in a corner. He wanted to get a good look at her. She had a very fine figure. Her face had clean lines, her jaw almost classical. When she turned her eyes on him, he noticed they were green, like a tiger’s. Her gaze was piercing, cold, but kindly. The more he stared at her, the more familiar she became. She bore his scrutiny calmly. Not a word passed between them.
When the lift came to a halt, he stepped out into a white corridor with a shining marble floor. He was careful not to slip. On the wall there was an abstract mosaic, made of tiles, behind glass. There were framed drawings along the white walls.
At the end of the corridor was the vast lobby, with long-stemmed flowers in giant vases on glass tables. Sofas and little tables formed interlocking semi-circles. They passed a recess where three managers sat at desks behind their computers. They leapt to their feet.
‘Good morning, sir,’ the senior among them said. ‘I trust all is to your liking?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ he said, a little thrown by their attention.
‘Is there anything you need?’
‘Not right now.’
‘And you, madame?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Is the room comfortable?’
‘Very.’
‘We are pleased. If there is anything you need at all, just tell us and we will do our best to accommodate you.’
‘Thank you,’ he stammered.
He was not used to this quality of politeness and concern, and at first it disconcerted him. The staff were polite and kindly all the way to breakfast. By the time he had taken his seat he felt a little more comfortable.
The breakfast room was spacious and white and clean. There were gigantic flowers on a huge central table. They sat near the big windows. He watched two soldiers patrolling the grounds outside. There was snow at the foot of trees. The steel and glass tower reflected the sun from its hundred silvered windows. He looked around the room. There was a large family at the round table next to them.
He settled his gaze on the woman who sat opposite him. She looked startling in her cool beauty.
‘What is this name they call me?’
‘It’s your name.’
‘My name?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do they all know my name?’
‘It’s part of their training.’
‘Their training?’
‘Learning the names of guests.’
A waiter appeared at their table like a genie. They gave him their orders. He followed their complicated requests. She wanted a yoghurt, Bircher muesli with soya milk, and white tea. He wanted muesli with fruit salad and orange juice to start. Then he wanted a full English breakfast with two eggs. They ate silently. He often felt her eyes on him. But when he looked up, she turned away.
At eleven they were in the lobby. He stood near a table, on which were golden cups, vases, a metal dish, filigreed lanterns, all in an ancient Arabic style. Before him, on the massive central wall, was a vast photomontage of the Dolmabahçe Palace. The photograph somehow simultaneously depicted the inside and the outside of the palace, with its labyrinthine steps, its balusters and halls, its rooms and stairways, its tapestries and crystal chandeliers, its peacock on a red rug and its Mongolian tiger. The more he stared at the picture the better he felt. It was a vertiginous work, and it reminded him of the rigorous symmetries of Escher.
While he was contemplating the paradoxes of the stairways in the picture, a slender woman appeared before him.
‘My name is Nergis,’ she said. ‘And it is a pleasure to have you with us, Mr Oraza. Shall we sit?’
They sat down on one of the light-coloured sofas. The lobby was spacious, the ceiling high and the chandeliers elaborate. Behind them were two giant sculptures. One was of a seated woman.
Nergis had a notepad in her hand. She looked at him.
‘I thought we should discuss things you would like to see in Istanbul.’
‘So we are in Istanbul?’
‘Yes,’ Nergis said, looking at the woman as if to ascertain whether he was serious. The woman shrugged.
‘My husband has a strange sense of humour,’ she said.
Nergis smiled.
‘There are so many things to see in this city that it would take you months to see them all.’
As she finished, a lady with a bright smile came to their table and asked if they wanted anything. He was hesitant, and Nergis suggested Turkish tea. The serving lady returned a short while later with a silver platter bearing dark red teas in small transparent glasses. There were also two bottles of ice cool water and a bowl of sugar.
He was not sure how to drink the tea till the woman put two small cubes of brown sugar into her glass. Then she stirred and sipped. He did likewise. He was surprised by the bitter but delicate flavour. After the first few sips he felt mysteriously revived, but he didn’t feel any clearer.
Nergis began asking questions about what they would like to see. He mentioned one or two places that were famous. Nergis made notes and then suggested other places. The wife looked on with a half smile.
‘I’d like to go where ordinary people live,’ he said.
‘They live everywhere,’ Nergis said. ‘In Istanbul we have neighbourhoods and each neighbourhood has its unique character.’
‘What is your favourite neighbourhood?’
‘Beşiktaş. The bazaar.’
‘Put that on the list.’
‘And what are your favourite things to do in the day?’ asked the woman.
‘When I have a day off I love to go on the ferry along the Bosphorus with a simit.’
‘Simit?’
‘A bagel.’
‘I see.’
‘I love feeding the bagel to the birds. I love throwing pieces of bagel in the air and watching the birds catch them. Sometimes they feed off your hands.’
‘We’ll do that then.’
‘I will put it on the list.’
That’s how they made the list. The serving lady brought Turkish tea twice and kept filling their glasses with water. When Nergis finished the list, she saw him staring at the photomontage.
‘You like it?’
‘It’s intriguing.’
‘It was made by an American artist. It’s a digital painting. The artist was given permission to photograph the Dolmabahçe Palace. Pictures of the interior and exterior are placed on the same surface. That is why a staircase leads to a red room and why…’
A concierge came over and whispered something to Nergis. When he left, she said:
‘Your car is here.’
‘Our car?’
‘To take you on a tour of the city.’
He looked at the woman. Her eyes shone but she said nothing. Nergis rose.
‘I know you will have a wonderful day,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured.
A concierge led them through the revolving doors, into the sunlight where a black limousine was waiting. The woman who was his wife slid into the back seat, and he climbed in after her. The seats were plump. The driver started the engine. Then a man got into the seat next to the driver. He turned round to face them. He had sad eyes and a face that betrayed some hidden suffering.
‘Welcome to Istanbul, Mr Oraza. My name is Mehmet. I am your guide, and you are my Sultan. Anything you want me to do, I will do.’
The driver engaged gear and drove out of the hotel complex. As they drove out into the tangle of roads, he felt himself dissolving.
The window was the world and the world was misting over. A curious feeling that he was fracturing came over him. He shut his eyes. Instability returned when he opened them again.
They seemed to drive a long way round the city. Sometimes the traffic was light, and sometimes it was heavy. While they drove, the guide spoke. He wove in and out of the guide’s words, forming a mosaic picture of the city. The guide said it was a city of melancholy and dreams. Twenty-five centuries of history and five civilisations had been compressed into the city. It was the only city in the world that straddled two continents. The guide quoted an ancient chronicler, who said that if any city deserved to be the centre of the world it was this one. It was a city of jewels scattered over seven hills. Jason and the Argonauts, seeking the Golden Fleece, had drifted through here. The streets had known the impress of Greek civilisation, the Roman Legions, and waves of Ottoman Turks, who gave the nation its name.
‘All who came here were changed by the dreaminess of the location. Four times the city has changed its name. And each of its names is a portal to one aspect of its dreams. Names are important here,’ said the guide, turning to stare at him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘To seek Byzantium is to seek a city hovering above this one, a legend half lost among cathedrals and ruins. It is like seeking to live in a poem. No one who finds it escapes.’
The guide stared at him. He withstood the stare. Then he turned to look out of the window, at the snow turning to slush along the roadside. He saw the pale white houses with red-tiled roofs. Trams weaving their way through the city put him in a thoughtful mood. He liked cities with trams. He gazed at shop-fronts, at cafés where people sat outside drinking tea in little cups. The sky was clear and a mild spring sun lent the city its gold. He could tell by the names on signboards, and by the changing character of places, when he was passing from one neighbourhood to the next. He saw mosques and churches and a cement-coloured building, old before its time. Each mosque gave its neighbourhood a unique mood. For a moment he thought he was in Egypt or Dubai. The feeling was elusive, but persistent. He stared at the roads, the towers, the flyovers, the shimmering glass of skyscrapers. He was seeing and not seeing, and he liked it.
The woman was silent beside him. She stared out of the window as if she were a part of what she saw. Maybe it was her way of being comfortable everywhere. Her gaze was detached and yet warm. Her detachment made her beauty more striking. But her face changed when she became aware that he was studying her. He could feel the invisible shield she was putting up against his scrutiny.
Outside, the mood of the sky doubled. He had been conscious of the silver mood of the sea without noticing it.
‘The city is shaped by its rivers and its hills,’ said the guide. ‘I have brought you to the Marmara. Through these waters come the ships of the world. Do you see them? Then they have to go through the Bosphorus, that narrow stretch of water, one of the most important gateways in the world.’
He stared at the ships as the guide spoke.
‘The ships go through it slowly. The ships you are seeing now are waiting their turn.’
The car glided alongside the Bosphorus.
‘Beyond the Bosphorus is the Golden Horn. The river divides the city. I will not give you its history or I will be talking for several weeks. The names alone are sometimes their own history.’
He had stopped listening. The names had sent him off in a dream. He was no longer himself. He had gone off on the first of his slippages. He was now the Sultan’s palace with its centuries of Ottoman rule, its gold-leaf ceiling, its crystal and mahogany staircase, its magnificent carpets, and the room in which time is frozen, where Ataturk died. He felt the palace as a home of sighs and splendour. The gardens were full of whispers and the mirrors were full of songs. Its harems troubled his dreams. Its armed soldiers stood in constant vigilance. Its gate contemplated the Bosphorus.
He would have continued in this dream but for his wife gently shaking his shoulder.
‘Do you see the different heights of the wall?’ said the guide. ‘That’s because the Sultan did not want the world to have a glimpse into his harem. So he built the wall higher here.’
‘How many wives did the Sultan have?’ asked the woman.
It was the first time she had spoken on the drive round the city.
‘Sometimes they can have more than two hundred concubines.’
Beyond the window the streets were throbbing. There seemed to him a strange contrast between the magnificence of the city, its domes, its palaces, its thousand spires, its beautiful mosques, and the crowds of people climbing the hills or hurrying along the streets.
Looking out of the window, on the Galata Bridge, it occurred to him that the city was a vast open museum, surrounded by a blue sea. They were in a traffic jam. The slowness of their crawl made him aware of a close line of men leaning over the bridge. They were looking earnestly over the waters.
‘What are they doing?’
‘They are fishing.’
‘What are they fishing?’
‘Black Sea mackerel.’
Then he saw the dark curves of their fishing rods.
‘I don’t have a rod,’ he said wistfully, ‘or I’d join them.’
‘You can still join them.’
‘How?’
The guide asked the driver to stop.
They got out of the car. There was a chill wind blowing over the river.
They went among the men fishing. The men were solemn and silent and did not resent the intrusion.
‘We keep a rod in the trunk of the car,’ the guide said. ‘Do you really want to fish? You could be here all day.’
‘Maybe another time,’ said Oraza.
They stood there and watched the swirl and flow of the water. The skyline was a music of mosques on the hills. While he stood there he heard the pern of a fishing rod spinning. None of the men caught any fish. They stood there patiently, as though fishing were an excuse for something more mysterious. He stood there with them and breathed in the essence of the Golden Horn.
After much driving around, after listening to the history of the city and the description of its famous sites, they were taken to a street of spices. There were small pyramids of yellow and red and gold beneath the wooden eaves of the market. The blended odour of peppers and turmeric was strong in their nostrils. The guide took them to a café and left them to themselves for a while. Oraza had red tea and the woman had black tea and baklava.
‘I’ve wanted baklava all day,’ she said.
He noticed that her face had changed. Her features were purer and whiter, her hair still red, her eyes still tiger-green. She was different but the same.
‘Who are you really?’ he said after a while. ‘I didn’t want to ask in front of the guide.’
‘I am a dream that you had once and will have again.’
‘A dream I had once?’
‘Before your obsession with Byzantium.’
A smile trembled on her lips.
‘If you like, I am the dream of Byzantium itself.’
‘How?’
‘In the world in which you dwell, a castle can become a bird, a palace can become a song. This city is full of dreams and here dreams can become things. But things also can become dreams.’
‘I half understand you.’
‘There are many realities in this place. In which reality do you want to live?’
‘Can I choose?’
‘Of course.’
He pondered this, his mind gently whirling.
‘Those red and yellow spices, what do you think they might be?’
He looked at the mounds of spices and the men seated in the recesses of their shops.
‘I don’t know.’
‘That is because you are looking.’
‘What should I do then?’
‘Do what you do best.’
‘What is that?’
‘Dream.’
He let his mind drift and suddenly from the spices he was overwhelmed with the plangent sound of an old Turkish lute. He had heard it once before in his quest for Byzantium. The sound, like the sigh of abandoned lovers, brought a throb of tears to his heart. He gripped the table.
‘Are you all right?’
He had no time to reply. The guide had returned and was urging them to continue the tour. Oraza discreetly wiped the tears from his face, and rose. The woman looked at him compassionately.
Outside, the guide said:
‘I want to take you to my favourite mosque.’
They could see spires through stone arches. There was a clothes shop below. The guide led them up grey stone steps. When they entered the mosque, with their shoes off and the woman’s head covered with an orange scarf, Oraza immediately felt the abundant peace of the place. The guide drew his attention to the Iznik faiences, with their intricate patterns of blue and yellow and brown on the walls and pillars. Light from the high-arched windows flooded the orange carpet. They stood beneath the circular low-hanging chandeliers and marvelled.
‘This is the Rustem Pasha Mosque and it was built by the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan in 1561,’ said the guide.
‘I can see why it’s your favourite mosque,’ said Oraza.
The dome with its patterns reminded him of peacock feathers.
‘Come, let me show you something.’
The guide led them out. They put their shoes back on and went down the stairs and out the back of the building. He showed them a stump of stone.
‘That’s where they chopped off the hands of women who committed adultery,’ the guide said dramatically. Then he added, ‘Or any other crimes in the old days.’
The woman went over and, bending low, put her wrists on the stone, just to see what it felt like. They laughed nervously.
At a herbal shop, on Asmaalti Caddesi, they were served a red and refreshing tea. While they were drinking, the owner came in. He was a short thickset man with a dense beard. When he saw Oraza, he said:
‘Have you found Byzantium yet?’
Oraza made no reply but studied the snake oil bottles and the Argan cream and the leaves and the bars of Turkish delight patterned about the shop. The owner began telling them about the work he was doing with the distilled essence of herbs from all over the world.
‘I have herbs here that cure cancer,’ he said energetically.
But Oraza was not listening because he was thinking of the Byzantium he had not yet found. Then he had one of those moments of slippages. He found himself in a bazaar. Then he was in a shop looking at scarves and wraps. Then he was in a restaurant, drinking ayran. Then he had a vision of domes and spires against a deep blue sky. Birds were circling the spires. All the while the guide was talking about the city.
When the slippage settled he was kneeling near a pillar in the Blue Mosque. It was crowded and there were shoes in wooden cabinets behind him. The woman was kneeling next to him and the Japanese visitors who went past took pictures of the two of them. The Iznik tiles gleamed in the muted luminous light from the Venetian windows. A moment later he put his palms to one of the four massive pillars called Elephant Feet. When he touched the pillar, he felt the charge of a dark tranquil light populated with forms and ghosts across the centuries who had made their pilgrimages to this place.
Outside, in the snow-covered park, they sat on a bench between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, while the guide told them of the misunderstanding that led to the creation of the eight domes on the great mosque.
The day went fast but he tried to live it slow. The woman with him glowed in the sun. Sometimes she appeared small, other times she appeared tall. Sometimes her hair was blonde, other times red. She too was a slippage, but she was always the same beneath her changing forms.
Later, when they were walking down the street, he saw an old wooden house with a black cat sitting on a windowsill. He felt again the instability of the world. All through a lunch of blue fish and salads the sense of unreality persisted. He was sitting across from the woman in the Balıkçı Sabahattin fish restaurant and she was telling him about her life in a narrative of spices and blue cloths. Her words turned into yellow birds in his mind. They were like the lost fragrance of golden incense.
They went across the Hippodrome and gazed at the Egyptian obelisk and the Delphic stone. Then they went down into the underworld and wandered among the columns and looked down into the dark waters. They encountered the two faces of Medusa. It was cold down there and in the water there were swarms of big dark fish. He felt, on touching a pillar, that he had seen an image of his future. But before he could grasp it they were above ground again and walking along the grey stones of the city walls.
Time kept breaking up for him. Some moments were long and sun-filled. Others were short and magical. There was a brief dream of the Jewish cemetery and a tramp sleeping on a bench and then wandering around in the splendours of the Grand Bazaar. He was next aware of trams grinding past them in the darkening street and then of their journey back to the hotel up in Zincirlikuyu, from where the city glimmered at night.
In the hotel lobby their butler hurried towards them. She was compact and neat. She wanted to find out if there was anything they needed. All he wanted was a moment’s rest before dinner. The butler had tea sent up to their room in an elegant tea service.
At dinner they listened to the gentle touch of the pianist performing Turkish songs.
‘I can only be here when you dream me,’ the woman with him said, after they had ordered.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘If you forget to dream me I won’t be here.’
‘Why not?’
‘It is the law of the world in which we meet.’
‘What are the other laws?’
‘They are many, but really only a few.’
‘Give me one or two.’
She thought a moment. They were sitting in a corner of the hotel restaurant, under a dim light.
‘We are how we are because of how others are,’ she said quietly.
‘That’s hard to understand.’
‘It’s very simple. I am how I am because of how you are. Mutually, we create our reality.’
‘I still need to think about it. Give me another.’
‘Each person, even those we love, suppresses some aspect of ourselves.’
‘Is that a law or an observation?’
‘You will find that it is true here.’
‘Where is here?’
‘The world in which we meet.’
‘Are there other worlds?’
‘There are worlds in which we meet but don’t know it.’
After that they ate in thoughtful silence, nourished by a fine blend of Turkish red wine.
As his head touched the pillow, he went off into another slippage. The woman was no longer there. In her place was Bach’s Goldberg Variations, played upon an invisible piano. Suddenly he was not himself any longer. He was a young English dancer who loved maps and was lost in the charms of the spice market. He was an Italian lecturer of semiotics sitting in a Bebek bar, staring at the Bosphorus. He was a tour guide with a bad cold, conducting these demanding tourists through the labyrinths of the city. He was a fountain, lit at night, whose uprush of water failed to reach the night sky. He was an artist in Üsküdar, painting the same abstract canvas over and over again. He was the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great concealing a timeless secret. As if he were experiencing what the Gnostics called the multiplicity and oneness of being, he was always something different and yet the same. But when he became the spice market, with its little pyramids of paprika and hibiscus, he fell into a long dreamless sleep.
He woke to find himself in the Hagia Sophia. He had no idea how he got there. The guide was not with them. He felt in the cathedral a great sense of spaciousness. A big section of it was closed off for repairs. He felt the woman with him, but he could not see her. She was with him in fragments of the Goldberg variation that was floating about him in the air. A sense of tranquillity came over him. He wandered around on the ground floor. He gazed at the chandeliers. High above he saw the blue and gold mosaic of the Christ Pantocrator raise his right hand in gentle benediction, left hand bearing a golden book. On both sides of him, in roundels, were the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel. There were verses from the Koran high up there too. The central dome had been taken over by Arabic calligraphy.
His guide suddenly appeared and told him, with the brevity of dreams, the legends of the Hagia Sophia. Here was the centre of Byzantium. Here was once the centre of the world.
He was wandering past a pillar when he saw the woman. She was on her knees, playing with the two black cats of the cathedral. As he approached, she looked up at him and smiled. She left off playing with the cats and joined him on his tour. They went upstairs and looked down over the nave. They were closer to the plaques with inscriptions. They lingered at the blue and gold mosaics. They were in the Hagia Sophia a long time and were the last to leave. There was a mirror over the main door which reflected a fresco behind them. Each time he passed through a door in the cathedral he felt clearer.
It was sunny outside. They bought roasted corn from a vendor. The four minarets of the Hagia Sophia were like slender spacecrafts about to launch into the cloudy sky. In Gülhane Park he saw water washing over the sculpture of a pink open book. Statues sat among the trees. Children were blowing bubbles next to a man who sold plastic pistols. There was snow on the grass.
He was getting used to being there. As they walked along the city wall, the woman changed again. She was now slim and tall. She was in an evil mood. She did not want to speak and she walked on ahead of him. When he caught her eye, the woman turned cold again.
They were looking for Hoca Paşa Sokak and they got lost. They went down streets with tramlines, past shops and cafés. They were misdirected several times. They found where they were looking for at the end of a street of restaurants. They stopped to have a bite in a small establishment. They had Kalamata olives, grilled red peppers, and Manti. Then they went to the Hodjapasha for the Mevlevi Sema ceremony.
Inside, the circular hall was crowded. The musicians came in with long white hats. He listened to the plucking of the yayli tambur and the beating of the kudum. When the dancers came into the centre of the stage and took off their black cloaks, revealing the pure white coats and gowns underneath, he felt himself slipping. As they whirled to the rhythm of the ney and the kanun, and the mesmeric beat of the kudum, he felt himself swaying and then rising. Soon he was lost in the immensity of Divine Love.
At dinner he was alone again. He was alone because of where the Whirling Dervishes had taken him. The waiter, solicitous and charming, was once a famous footballer. Oraza had a salad and minced lamb and a little red wine and went up to bed. He tried to sleep but he kept slipping off again. He was a Sufi dervish whirling through the universe and dreaming about a girl he once saw in a crowd. He was a waiter in Arnavutköy whose wife had left him after thirteen years because they could not have children. He was a film director in Tarlabaşı, a black and Gypsy neighbourhood, looking for a long-lost friend. He was the Grand Bazaar with its shops of cloths and panoply of lights. He was the Hagia Sophia at night.
In the morning it was drizzling. The aria from the Goldberg Variations was in the air again. He listened to it while he looked at the sprawl of houses across the city. The city had become the music. He stared at the bridge outside his hotel window. Beyond the Bosphorus white houses with ochre tiles ranged along the rhythm of the hills.
Downstairs in the lobby, the doorman got him a taxi to take him to the Eminönü pier. He wanted to visit the Asian side of the city. There was mostly a dark-haired crowd in the ferry waiting hall. The men were bearded. After a while he began to recognise the Turkish configuration of face. How do people acquire that characteristic stamp of national features on their faces, he was thinking. Then among the faces he saw one that was different. She was singing softly to herself by the window. When she looked up, he saw that it was the woman who claimed to be his wife. He went over to her.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said.
‘You can’t have missed me or I would be there.’
‘Sometimes I forget how to dream,’ he said.
‘Last night you lost me and did not notice.’
He could not speak.
‘Do you know how strange it is to not be the centre of your loving attention?’
He stayed silent.
‘It makes one disappear. It makes one invisible.’
In a far corner of the waiting room a woman was practising tango steps to music in her headset. He slipped into someone’s mind and did not know how. It was a man thinking of his girlfriend. That morning he realised he could not live with her. He realised also that one morning he would commit suicide and it would never be clear why he had done it, because all the evidence showed that he should have been happy. He was still in this man’s mind when the ferry arrived. He looked around to see who it might have been. All the young men had anxious faces. It could have been any one of them.
They got on board the ferry and made their way to the top deck. He watched the ships drifting on the Bosphorus. He watched the churning of water in the ferry’s wake.
When he looked sideways he saw the woman in a haze of hovering birds. In a kind of benediction, she was feeding them. The wind was strong and cold. In Kadıköy they came upon the statue of a man with a plate of fishes. It was raining now and they bought transparent umbrellas. That day it seemed the woman enjoyed laughing at him. When he made a mistake, when he opened the umbrella and dropped it, she laughed.
They caught a yellow bus to Bağdat street and walked its length and sat in the drizzling park. He had lowered his umbrella, to feel the rain on his face. He was happy. She did not speak, but her face glowed.
Near the pier, they wandered through the market of spices and fruits. They came to a second-hand bookshop and spent an hour browsing downstairs and upstairs. They bought an old book about the city and another on Sufi dancing. In the Çiya restaurant opposite they sat at an upstairs window and looked at the busy street. They had Iskenderun kebab and a mixed salad and black tea.
‘Why do you speak so little?’ he said to the woman.
‘It’s better to listen.’
‘What do you listen to?’
‘The city.’
‘What do you hear?’
She fastened on him a luminous gaze.
‘I can hear a woman thinking that it is easier for her to love someone she does not know.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘What else can you hear?’
‘I can hear a widower thinking that we meet people late in their personal story and that’s where the difficulty of love comes from. What can you hear?’
‘I can hear a student thinking that we fall in love with a woman’s face and are often disenchanted with the character behind it.’
‘Many women are thinking that too about men.’
‘Some survive the disenchantment and discover true love.’
‘True love can only come after disenchantment.’
‘Why is that?’
‘The first enchantment is a madness and a fragility. The madness of a fool and the fragility of a spring flower. The second enchantment is as slow as the growth of a great tree and deeper than the ocean. But to get to the second enchantment one must survive the desert and the fire. Then one must grow a new heart, for the first heart dies with the disenchantment.’
He stared at her as she spoke. Her eyes were faraway and shone like green diamonds.
They had finished eating. They had paid and were going down the narrow stairs when he heard himself say:
‘Will you marry me?’
She laughed.
‘I’m your dream. How can you marry your dream?’
At 6.35 p.m., just outside the restaurant, just after she mentioned the word dream, the chain round his neck broke. The seven jewels fell down his chest. One by one he fished them out from under his shirt.
It was dark over the marketplace. He knew that it was time to go back home.
As they were leaving Kadıköy, on the ferry, he saw two flags fluttering on the dock. They passed the silent shipyard. As they approached Eminönü he saw, high up on a street, traffic like lava pouring down the hill. Another street was like jewels tumbling from a height. He watched the slow crawl of pearls across the bridge.
In the night the steeples levitated in gold. The hills unveiled their minarets.
He felt the flight of cathedral melodies and the weight of the tunes of the mosques. The city haunted him with its history and its nocturnal splendour. The night hours flowed by and the long age bloomed in ruins and towers. The city at night was a carnival riot of red and blue and yellow lights, glimmering bulbs of diamond and gold.
Back in the hotel they lingered in the heft and lightness of the lobby. They went upstairs and decided to have a hammam. He was struck that the woman who looked after them was called Ebro. He slept briefly in a paradise of bubbles. Back in their room he found it hard to sleep. He kept falling into slippages. He suffered and was resurrected in the march of the centuries. Like flowers, the palaces sprouted. The cathedral drew the heart of the world like pilgrims to a centre. The two cities rose and became one, with the curve of its river and its emerald skies. He became the viaducts and the underground cistern and the dark water shivering with big dark fish. He could not sleep and that aria pervaded his sleeplessness. Then at last he embraced the aria and realised that the music had coded the city for him privately. He was drifting now when he felt the strange woman next to him and he wanted the music played over and over again the way some people would like to see, in a special light, the face of their elusive dream of love brought fresh from the living air.
At the point in which he was happiest, he became the city itself. He became its pavilions, its golden throne, its sycamore trees, and the shimmer of the Bosphorus in the sunlight. And when he became the city he lost everything. He fell into a long mysterious absence, and woke up in his own bed, surrounded by stacks of books about a city he had never visited.
Two weeks later he was sitting by the misting window of the café. He had been back there every day and the strange man had not returned. In the newspapers he had learned that during his absence three young girls had fled to Istanbul on their way to join a violent Islamic cult in Syria. There had been a diplomatic row.
He had been sitting by the window, thinking that the man would never return, when the lights changed. He turned and saw the strange man next to him, dressed in white and wearing white gloves.
‘What did you do to me?’ he said to the man. ‘Was that a dream or was it real?’
‘I can buy you a ticket to Istanbul and when you come back you can tell me which is more real.’
‘But what did you do to me?’
‘I showed you that it is unreality that makes the world real.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You take every day for granted. That for you is real. But if you stop taking it for granted it becomes unreal. Unreality makes the world real. If you remember how unreal the world is you will be fine.’
One day, three months later, he was wandering the streets of a northern city. He had never felt clearer in his head.
As he was walking he heard the slender strains of the aria from the Goldberg Variations. It was seeping out of a fine building. Without a moment’s thought he went and knocked on the door. No one answered. He pushed the door open into a clear space with polished floors. He saw couples practising salsa. Further on he saw a ballet class in progress. There was a woman at the piano. When she looked up, he saw that it was her.
What do you do when your dream has stepped out of your dream?