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Now Mr. Pamuk regularly travels to New York to indulge his passion for contemporary Western culture just as he engages with his own national heritage in Istanbul. He said: “You go to the past and try to invent a pure image of yourself, then you understand the vanity and romanticism of it. Then you go to the West and are shamelessly inspired by the newest postmodern form. Then you also realize the vanity of it. And your pendulum goes back between East and West.

“What is important is that you don’t have to be too problematical and ethical about this. That is how life is at that corner of the world, and I accept it. My happiness is that I can make a melancholy music out of all these comings and goings.”

INTERVIEW

John Freely

One of the highlights of my last visit to Istanbul, and indeed of my life, was meeting John Freely. I was accompanied by my friend of twenty-seven years, Peggy Harrison, a freelance photographer, and my wonderful Istanbul guide and friend, Gamze Artaman (see interview, page 189). We sat with John in his study on the campus of Boğaziçi University (Bosphorus University), surrounded by his library and watercolors of Istanbul that were painted by his wife, Dolores, while he regaled us with story after story, of which I could only keep up with half.

Q: How long have you lived in Istanbul?

A: Since 1960, but my wife and I left for some years, thinking we might live in Venice, but when we returned in 1993 we knew we would never leave again.

Q: What are some things that are different, and some things that are the same, in Istanbul since you first came here?

A: Everything is different! The city is very international now, with so many different people from all over the world. Do you know we have sixty-two different countries represented at Boğaziçi University? This city is teeming with all kinds of interesting people! We all change but we’re all the same persona, and the persona of Istanbul is still the same. When I came it was a very gentle, dreamy city, and much more interesting; it was really like an Ara Güler photograph. Istanbul has lost its soft experience, its Greeks, even the restaurants are different.… It will never be the same. The city’s a meat grinder … it’s another city now, but it’s still a great city.

Sometimes when people ask what has changed, in lieu of an answer I refer them to a chapter in Stamboul Sketches called “A Café on the Bosphorus.” The chapter is named for a now-vanished meyhane called Nazmi’s. A fisherman there named Riza Kaptan once explained to us the unchanging cycle of seasons and their ever-recurring winds that has implanted itself deeply in the subconscious of the city, so that those of us exiled here have attuned ourselves to it just as the departed generations did who lived here in times past. When I returned to Istanbul in 1993, I found that Nazmi’s had closed and that Riza Kaptan had passed away. I sat on a park bench on the quay opposite the site of Nazmi’s, now occupied by an apartment house, and from there I could see two old fishermen sitting in a shack they’d built on a bit of strand beside a seaside yalı. After a while one of the fishermen joined me, having no idea who I was, though I recognized him as one of Riza’s younger cronies, his beard now as white as mine. He said he’d never spoken to a foreigner before except for one strange guy who was also American and who used to love hanging around disreputable dives and talking to low-life types—someone like me, he said, but with a reddish beard rather than a white one. Then I realized he was talking about me, but I let it pass, so that he could think of me as I was.

Q: What are some things you would suggest first-time visitors see and do in Istanbul?

A: Visitors should absolutely see the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya, and Topkapı, but they should also do things like take the little rowboat across the Golden Horn from the ferry station next to Galata Bridge, near the Spice Market. I first took this boat in