He romanticises it, of course, like all those who have come before him with their dreams of the Orient. In doing so, though he is yet to learn exactly how, he does a disservice. He consigns it to some semi-mythical, unpopulated realm. And in doing so he discounts its current inhabitants, modern and war-wrung, trying to continue with the business of living. The woman in the garden, for example … what thought has he of her?
But that first sight of it, in 1918. Standing on the deck of the Queen Elizabeth as it muscled its way along the Golden Horn, with the great gun turret rotating toward shore in case some member of the watching crowd had ‘any ideas’. All of them, even the rowdiest of his fellow soldiers, had been stunned before the wonder of it. It was suddenly inconceivable that they were arriving to occupy this great and beautiful place, more ancient than any of them could imagine. In that moment it had dwarfed them, taken possession of them. They were an inconsequential footnote in a tale begun millennia ago, in which armies far greater than they had come and conquered and been vanquished in their turn.
Now their numbers contribute to the chaos of the streets. To the black robes of Greek priests, the red fezzes of the Ottomans, the silk-veiled women, the brown jackets of the street sellers, the long mustard habits of the toll collectors on the bridge at Galata, are added Italian, British, American khaki, French blue. In the first few weeks they appeared parade-ready, these soldiers. And some of them had paraded, about the whole of the city – up the steep hill of Galata and Pera, across the bridge to Scutari. Impressive formations before the Byzantine splendour of the Aya Sofia, the eternal grace of the Blue Mosque. This was an attempt to display strength, dominion. Silent crowds of the vanquished had gathered to watch. But had there not, he wondered, been something slightly ludicrous in it?
He takes the tram to Galata, walks over the bridge to the part of the city they call Stamboul. Here the majority of the Muslim population lives. Here are all the choicest wonders of architecture, glories of the ancient world. There sits the jewel of Byzantium, the Aya Sofia, towering above the surrounding streets, rust-red in the morning light. Facing it, challenging its beauty: Sultanahmet, pride of the conquering Ottomans with its gorgeous array of gilt-tipped domes. A short distance away is the Topkapi palace: home to four centuries of sultans. It appears innocuous from this distance, veiled by tall, old trees … but at one time this was the nucleus of great love stories, of empire-threatening feuds, scandals that supplanted dynasties. And few places can be so shrouded in myth as the imperial harem, where once scores of women lived out their lives in blue-tiled rooms. If there is such a thing as the spirit of a city, it might reside there.
This is the realm of the French occupation, pale blue uniforms weave among the crowds. In British-held Pera the streets have a European feel: a blocky stone grandeur, wrought-iron, modern boulevards that might almost have been designed by Paris’ Haussmann. A municipal grandeur. This might be another city entirely. Here everything is built on a more delicate scale: houses of filigree wood, and the spires of mosques rising from the rooftops like lace-spindles. This is the city of which great men – and the occasional woman – have written, with which they have fallen in love. Here the streets seem to follow little logic, and look so alike that it can take several minutes before he realises that he is not quite where he thought he was. He has now a flimsy idea of the territory immediately beside the waterfront, based upon particular coffee shops and certain architectural features – green shutters, a building painted the unlikely pink of a sunset, a balcony of exquisitely detailed wrought-iron leaves.
He has discovered a barber here, in the shadow of the Blue Mosque, who will have one parade-smart for a song. He has a small assistant, eight years old, perhaps – or a malnourished ten – who brings coffee on a clattering tray. George usually tries to slip him a few piastres too.
He sits in the chair now, breathing the distinctive atmosphere of coffee, cologne, sweat. As he watches his jaw appears from beneath the shadow of bristles, starkly denuded, pale where the sun has not reached the skin. The moustache, too, with what seems like a single flick of the man’s wrist. It is something of a shock to see his old face appear; an unexpected reunion with a once-dear acquaintance. As he looks at this old version of himself he feels something within him list sideways. He takes a sip of the coffee, scalds his mouth, chews through the fine sediment of grounds, and feels himself restored to equilibrium.
He has learned to like the coffee here. It is served treacle-thick, heavily sweetened. At the bottom of the cup sits a sediment of fine grounds. The first couple of times he ordered it he chewed his way manfully through them, assuming this was an important, if unpleasant, part of the process. Eventually, the elderly man at the next table took pity upon him and explained, in a performance of gestures, that one stopped as soon as the tongue touched them.
Now he drinks several cups of the stuff a day, accompanied sometimes by one of the small sweetmeats: fine pastry dripping with honey that you have to eat quickly before it trickles down your sleeve.
Sometimes in the cafes he frequents he catches a glimpse of fellow khaki,
