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Each evening new and eccentric characters appear upon the scene. An acrobat stands on his head in the center of the Passage. He walks upon his hands along the tops of beer barrels to my window. His earrings dangle beside his swarthy, upside-down face and I notice that he has a purple star tattooed on his forehead. I attempt to engage him in conversation but he silently takes my coin and leaves, walking along the Passage on his hands, hardly noticed by the strollers. A young man seated across the table lifts his Argentine to me and smiles. He has a darkly handsome face and the chest and shoulders of a young Apollo. He finishes his beer and bids me good evening, after which he climbs down from his stool and disappears. A moment afterward I see him in the alley as he turns and waves back to me, a bisected demigod striding on his stumps over the cobbles of the Passage.

As the evenings go by, I watch for the unpredictable transits of Arnaut Mehmet, the Albanian flower-peddler. At times he is not seen for many months and I am told in the taverns that he is dead. Others who know him better say that he is wandering in the lower depths of Istanbul and that we will see him again when he has run his course. For this bum has the unerring sense of season of a migratory bird, and resurrects each spring along with the flowers he sells, like a drunken phoenix. We know that he is back when we hear his familiar shout—“Rose! Rose!”—as he staggers into the Passage from the fish market, swinging his bouquets about him to clear a path through the throng. Totally and unredeemably drunk, his forehead deeply creased from an axe blow, bloodshot eyes burning in his grimy face, nose busted, teeth shattered and lips swollen from his violent encounters in the underworld, gray-haired chest showing through the torn shirt and tattered suit which have been stained by every foul alley in Istanbul, ragged trousers held up by a piece of frayed rope and the seat ripped out as if by a mad dog, pant legs ripped and flapping in the breeze, black toes protruding from the shards of shoes which he must have fought for with an alley cat, his body caked with dirt and stinking like a leprous rat, he has, nonetheless, a certain dignity about him. Standing now before my window, the Albanian offers me a rose from his bouquet and bows from the waist when I present him a double rakı in return. He downs the rakı in one gulp, smacks his lips appreciatively, and then smashes the empty glass on his head before continuing along the Passage. He now feels fit to resume his flower-peddling and approaches lady shoppers with a charming but incoherent speech and what he believes to be his most patrician manner. But when they see and smell this drunken, reeking apparition the ladies invariably flee, while the Albanian stumbles through the crowd in angry pursuit, hurling his roses after them, bellowing in what I imagine must be Montenegrin. When the ladies make good their escape to the safety of the main street, the Albanian, now roseless, shrugs his shoulders and staggers sadly back through the Passage. Stopping once again before my window, he bows to me and his ruined face brightens in an angelic smile. I buy him another double rakı, which he quaffs with the same ceremonial shattering as before. Then he bows again, twirls his cap around on his scarred head, and staggers off down the Passage shouting—“Rose! Rose!”—that unconquerable spirit. The Albanian is always followed in his wanderings by two furtive and stumbling figures, even more ruinous than he, who steal his roses from him, picking them up after he has thrown them all over the Passage in his wild career. And there are others, I am sure, who depend on these two in turn, living off them in some dark corner of this fantastic town.

After the Albanian has gone, a wandering minstrel enters the Passage through the fish-market gate. He strums a few chords on his saz and is then called to play for a group of old friends sitting together