Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [67]
The Stamboullus pass by with their hands clasped behind their backs, fingering worry beads. Their faces are seamed, furrowed, wrinkled, weathered and warted; their hooded eyes rheumy, bloodshot and jaundiced; their hooked and hairy-nostriled noses dripping beads of snot; their hat brims turned down and their collars up; their long, black, shroudlike overcoats skimming the muddy pavement; walking with the lurching, stumbling gait produced by a lifetime on cobblestones. They stroll through the Passage slowly, staring into the taverns without apparent interest, turning their massive bodies rather than their immobile heads, occasionally crashing into one another and rebounding impassively, then continuing on their aimless way. The hours pass as I review this drab parade, and gray afternoon changes imperceptibly into gray-blue evening. For there are no clocks in town and the light in the Passage is too diffuse to give the hour. The weather is known from the shine on the cobbles and the season from the dress of the strollers.
But I know that twilight has ended when I see the night people of Stamboul beginning to make their appearance in the Passage. There are itinerant peddlers: sellers of hepatitic shellfish, uncrackable nuts, timeless wristwatches, secondhand shoes with the backs folded down for easy removal in mosques, worn overcoats still warm from their last owners, horoscopes for the unlucky and zodiacal lapel pins for the star-crossed and superstitious. There are wandering mendicants: beggars deaf, dumb, blind, legless, armless, or with thickets of twisted limbs; along with widows, orphans, veterans and abandoned patriarchs. There are Gypsies: leading bears, playing fiddles, beating tambourines, pounding drums, dancing, singing, begging, pimping and pilfering, their dark eyes always alert for the possibilities of plunder. A drunken painter sells landscapes of an arcadia which can be reached only after a long trip on cheap wine. A hairy peasant sells chances on gaunt chickens which are always won by another hairy peasant who is undoubtedly his brother. A purple-eyed prostitute offers to measure our blood pressure, which does not rise at the sight of her elephantine charms. A prick-eared dwarf limps by using a tree branch for a cane, striking out at the tormenting Gypsy-boys who pluck at his rags. A hunchbacked crone stops for a thimbleful of beer and hands a passionate love note to Ali, the handsome young barman.… One evening, while we were drinking by candlelight during a power failure, a swift ancient came running through the Passage and sold a whole carton of cigarette lighters; he assured us that they had been just recently stolen by him. At the sound of police whistles from the fish bazaar we put out our candles to assist the old thief in his escape. Then, upon the arrival of the blundering police, we flicked our lighters on and off to illuminate the comic chase as in a silent movie, while the Passage echoed with cheers and derisive laughter.
When the evening is at its height our joy is momentarily withered by the appearance of a cigarette-seller with unfocused and uncoordinated eyes, one orb apparently fixed on hell and the other on paradise. We quickly buy his cigarettes so that he will leave, after which we touch our amulets to ward off the evil eye before resuming our conversations.
And although he has been standing in the doorway for hours, we do not notice until late in the evening the bankrupt belt-seller, Mad Ahmet. Swathed to the eyes in a black muffler, he peers through his matted tangles of hair and beard and stands dreaming in a hashish cloud while his belts are stolen by Gypsies. He buys the belts back later at a loss, but being demented he is not aware of the unfair