Two Continents

I am brushing grime from two continents out of my hair. This evening dined on the Asian side of the city but before crossing the Bosporus I visited one of Istanbul's many immigrant neighborhoods.

Judging by the signs, faces and items available at the local bazaar (Thursday is this neighborhood's market day) most of these immigrants are originally from Greece, Russia, Southern and Eastern Europe and various parts of Africa. The abundance of locally grown fruits and vegetables was stunning. I have been to my fair share of Istanbul bazaars but nothing quite like this. There was the typical market swag -- plastic shoes, plastic hair bobs, plastic jewelry -- but there were also seemingly endless piles of fruits and vegetables, handmade pasta, tubs of fresh cheese and piles of eggs, row after row after row.

Everything about the neighborhood and its inhabitants felt so genuine... genuinely Turkish, genuinely local, genuinely "day-to-day". Our dorm is in a neighborhood that might as well be called Little America -- it's a beautiful, complete with a Porsche dealership, Starbucks and TGIFridays. In other words, it's an incredibly wealthy area, hardly representative of the lives of most people in the city. Most people I think live in the slightly or very dirty districts, hanging their laundry out the window to dry and buying tomatoes from their local tomato guy.

If Istanbul is anything, it is a city of often seemingly irreconcilable contrasts: movie stars and immigrants, Porches and handcarts, hi jabs and miniskirts. Turks talk about the "pulse" of the city. I'm beginning to think this rhythm is the sound of these various parts, somehow managing to co-exist in their shared, yet very different, worlds.