An Introduction

I leave for Istanbul in two days.

Though it's definately not my first time going to the old city, it is the most excited I've ever been to go. Reason being, I'll be an Istanbulite for 48 days. Technically, I lived in Istanbul for three years but those were the first years of my life so naturally no memory of that is left. This time I will be forced to learn the roads, deal with the 13 million people, and listen to the chaos.

Introducing Istanbul to someone is ... impossible. Its too complex.

Its likely the majortity of my upcoming posts will be all about the gargantuan city because there is plenty to say.

In the last book I read, The Saint of Incipient Insanities by Elif Shafak (highly recommend it), she says this for Ist.

"So the roofs shriek in Istanbul, but it is the streets that talk. It is on the streetsthat life throbs in a mélange of fuming and frustraed, aching and buoyant voices; the squawk of horns splintered by the piercing yell of street vendors, emergency sirens, prayers from copious mosques, and the clangor of distant church bells; a hovering humming accompanied by the constant swish of the sea, as if it intended to wash away this pandemonium once and for all. It is a city of infinite quarrels - between men and men, men and women, and life and death. The hubbub is so dense that even the faintest click fuses with an outcry far away, absorbing therefore, a touch of the overall tune. If you listen attentively, you'll notice there is an underlying rhythm. Streets are cadenced in Istanbul, far more harmoniously than the beat of the lives that slither upon them."


She also does this awesome TedTalk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/elif_shafak_the_politics_of_fiction.html