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Istanbul...
breeze
9 Oct 2005
Have you ever been to the place where you felt 100% home? A place, where air energizes you and makes you feel like you can move mountains and realize your craziest dreams; where the view just gives your soul a peace it was longing for so long; where people seem friendlier and prettier, food tastier, life happier, and everything just seems so perfect that you can't imagine living anywhere else but this place?
And maybe at a closer, more realistic look this place is not that great after all, maybe it's still underdeveloped, maybe the salaries are still lower and corruption rates higher, and maybe life wouldn't be a smooth ride after all and in contrary it would be full of bumps and struggle, but despite all these facts, this place still seems to be "your place"?
I think I found this place for me: my "heaven on earth" or whatever else you call it.. I just came back from my third trip to Istanbul and by far this was the best trip I've ever had to this city. There's something about this place that makes my heart beat faster, whenever I see millions of red tiled roofs from the window of the airplane; some inexplicable happiness overflows my heart that I feel like hugging and kissing every person that I see around. I remember even the first time I came to Istanbul, I had this weird feeling like I finally came back home, everything about that place just seemed so familiar and dear. And now, when I visited it again after 3-year break I realized how much I really missed it.
Istanbul... I love it. An amazing city spread between two continents, a mixture of East and West, a home to 16 million people.. a home to ancient empires, once great but whose power can still be felt in its impressive architecture, Haya Sofia, Top Kapi, Dolmabahce.. Bosporus with its boats and yachts, fishermen at the harbor, narrow streets that never sleep and are always filled with people.. Ottoman mosques and voice of muezzin calling for prayers, Byzantine churches standing right next to them ringing its bells, everything about this place just mesmerizes me so much. I don't know where does this love come from, I wasn't born there, I'm not even Turkish! The total time of my three visits to Istanbul doesn't go over a month, yet there's this bizarre connection I could never explain..
Ilan, my Israeli friend, says he has the same feeling about Jerusalem, whenever he visits it. He says that in Kabala, Jewish mysticism, this feeling is explained by the role this place is going to play in your destiny; whenever we have this feeling to a certain place, it means that we owe something to this city, to its people, something like connection from our previous lives..
Now I don't really believe in reincarnation, but it makes me wonder how cities of our birth are selected? Why was I born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, if I don't really feel much connection and passion towards this place? The only reason that keeps bringing me back to that country year after year is my family and friends and nothing else.
I feel like Istanbul chapter of my life is not over yet. I know that I will be back to that city. If I had a total freedom to do whatever I want, I would move there right after my graduation to live there, maybe not all my life but at least 1-2 years just to experience it to the fullest. People here think I'm crazy, giving up the "comfort and security" of the United States for a life in some developing country, where I'll be paid 1/3rd of my salary here. While people are trying to come to the U.S. for "American dream" I'm giving it up for a Turkish one.. But what is really the point of all the "comfort and security", if I don't really feel happy here? If in my thoughts I keep coming back to this one place, the only place where no matter how crappy the life actually is, I still feel like I'm the luckiest person on earth to be there..
I'm reading a book by Orhan Pamuk called "Istanbul: Memories and the City" and there he says "Some people need new places, new people, new environment for inspiration.. I need the same city, the same view from my window to give me inspiration and strength.. Istanbul's fate is my fate.. I'm attached to this place, because it made me who I am". No one said it better than him.
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