Travel Memoirs: Istanbul part3

Desserts in Turkey take on many aromatic guises in their war-like mission to ruin one's waistline and walking through the marketplace one faces its own portable amunition.
One of the most famous, referenced even in The Chronicles of Narnia, is Turkish Delight: lokum or loukoum. Contrary to what one might be led to believe from homonymous perfumes circulating, such as Rahat Loukoum by Lutens and Loukhoum by Keiko Mecheri, the traditional jelly-like delicasy, lightly dusted so as not to stick, isn't made with almond nor cherry. Instead lokoum is made from starch and sugar and aromatized with rose water and lemon, giving it a refreshing flavour, justifying the Arab name rahat al-hulkum (=contentment of the throat). Varieties might include little cubes with other nuts such as pistachios or walnuts and some types even have a touch of cinnamon or mint aroma.

Another olfactory delight is Salep, a traditional winter drink sold by street vendors in big copper caldrons. Salep is produced by grinding the dried tubers of Orchis mascula, Orchis militaris and related species of orchids, which contain a starch-like polysaccharide, bassorin, with nutritional and heartening properties. It has a reputation of being an aphrodisiac (which might be accounted by the etymology of its plant source, relating it to the Greek word for testicle!). It is milky, flavoured with rosewater or mastic and dusted with cinnamon or nutmeg, to be optionally sprinkled with crushed walnuts on top. Salep enters along with mastic into the traditional Turkish ice-cream, Dondurma, which is much stickier and resistant to melting than regular ice-cream or gelato.

A perfume that has being inspired by this drink is Ayala Moriel's Sahleb. A wonderful comforting fragrance with a starchy pudding quality about it, it gives you the cosy feeling of sipping a dessert rich in buttery creaminess with the aromatic tinge of mastic that recalls the Mediterranean. There is no floral clearly discernible, yet if one leans one's head and inhales deeply, there comes the subtle nuance of the traditional rosy loukoums of the Bazaar, down to the dusty, powdery feel of coconutty copra enrobing them. Vanillic goodness in restrained doses compliments the fluffy and nutty flavour of this softest of gourmands. It makes me nostalgize of the true salep on the streets of Istanbul. Sadly the true thing is forbidden to be exported. But how lucky are we that there is a fix in the form of a fragrance!

After all this indulgence, one needs to come to terms with one's body. When in Rome do as the Romans do. In this Nova Roma, who could deny a Turkish bath? Cagaloglu Hamami is one of the most famous hammams in the city, constructed in 1741 to bring revenue to the library of Sultan Mahmut I, situated inside the Haghia Sophia mosque. It receives both men (from the main street entrace, on Hilal-I Ahmer) and women (from the side street entrance).
Stepping into the various cubicles and rooms with terlik (a kind of slippers) on the feet and a pestemal (clothing wrap), one can see a raised platform of stone (goebektas) in the center, with bathing alcoves all around, in coloured quartz tiles which remove static and help unwind, by sweating and sustaining an internal dialogue. A sight to behold is the pool in the middle of the camegah with its waterjet.
The light is softly filtered through glass from the ceiling in the hot room (Hararet), with small star-like windows on the domes. The air is fragrant with the essences of various unguents and the mind is dizzied into a reverie. The exfoliation with kese is blissful, using lavender, tea, chamomile and olive oil soap. One can bring their own products and Harvey Nichols at 185 Kanyon Alýþveriþ Merkezi provides a rich selection, among which the organic Jo Wood line (by the wife of Ronnie of the Rolling Stones). Amka Bath Oil contains Persian rose Otto, feminine Egyptian jasmine, along with neroli and bergamot for their uplifting effect. Mmmmm...
Next one can require a relaxing massage to recuperate and energise the muscles, which is followed with hair washing and a cold shower, before drinking dark tea, aromatic and dense, at the old marble café-bar. One could get really spoiled in this place!

And yet in the strange, lucid melancholy of such an abode, I cannot help but wonder how many women or men with tragic love tales, unfulfilled desires and bittersweet memories have passed from here through the years, sighing and opening their souls to one another as mussels do when steamed.

Like this most touching tale: A Touch of Spice(Politiki Kouzina). A young Greek boy (Fanis) grows up in Istanbul, whose grandfather, a culinary philosopher and mentor,teaches him that both food and life require a little salt to give them flavor; they both require... a Touch of Spice. Fanis and his parents leave Istnabul during the 1963 deportation of Greeks. He grows up to become an astronomer and an excellent cook using his cooking skills to spice up the lives of those around him. 35 years later he leaves Athens and travels back to his birthplace of Istanbul to reunite with his grandfather and his childhood love, the Turkish girl Saïme, now married with a daughter; he travels back only to realize that he forgot to put a little bit of spice in his own life...



The song (Baharat, tarçın ve buse) translates as:

"That night you left me
you went with a pinch of spice
a shadow inside the marketplace
I laid salt on the streets of Beyoglu
to find you in the hideouts

A kiss of cinnamon and spice,
recipe hidden in the attic
Moonlight and the Bosphorus lonely
That lighthouse is our childhood love"

On that bittersweet note, we will leave the enchanting Istanbul behind...
But Travel Memoirs will take you to another fascinating destination soon.

Loukoums through Fotosearch. Painting In the Trepidarium by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (c.1903), originally uploaded on Mary's blog. Clip from the film Politiki Kouzina/A touch of Spice from Youtube, uploaded by JasonSeaman1

Travel Memoirs: Istanbul

"The ghosts return at night, little lights for unredeemed souls
And if you gaze up at the barricades, you’ll see figures looking back at you
And it’s then that a complaint wanders you through the cobblestone alleys
Of Constantinople, a lover from yore, whom you find in someone else’s embrace".

~"Vosporos", by Nikos Zoudiaris, sung by Alkinoos Ioannidis

Travel Memoirs begins with one of the most sensuous destinations: Istanbul ~the Ottoman name under which the former capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, is known today.
Initially the city was named after the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who made it Nova Roma, over the site of the ancient Greek colony founded by Megara citizens simply named Byzantium. Yet the name Istanbul itself is based on the common Greek usage of referring to Constantinople simply as “The City”, because it was the crown jewel of medieval cities with a population and grandeur that exceeded many western European cities, such as London, Paris and Rome, for centuries. It derives from the phrase "εις την Πόλιν" or "στην Πόλη" {(i)stimboli(n)}, both meaning "in the city" or "to the city".

And it is no surprise that in an Empire whose majority of the population was Greek or speaking Greek, there is still a strong Greek element running through the fabric of memory when one sets foot on Istanbul’s soil. But the Ottoman heritage is none the less interesting to witness: minarets and mosques, majestic palaces, bazaars, carpet dealers and salep sellers on the street peppered with excellent cuisine and suggestive dancing render the visitor captive of its charms. It’s this fusion between Occidental and Oriental that gives Istanbul its extraordinary character. A character of strange melancholy: perhaps it’s the ancestral call…

Passing through the arabesque cobblestone on Istiklal across from the fish market, one enters the Cukurcuma district, full of antique shops, lazy cats sunning their bellies and the aroma of slowly roasted, dark coffee on hot sand, Turkish coffee (Türk kahvesi), made the traditional way. The preparation begins by boiling finely powdered roast coffee beans in a copper ibrik, the shape of a tiny ewer, with the addition of cardamom and (optionally) sugar. The thick liquid boils and boils again ceremoniously, emitting the aroma beyond the scope of the little terraces where it is served. Made one cup (fildžan) at a time, where the dregs settle and a thick golden cream forms on top, the köpük, it is a process of slow anticipation, a largo of animation. And also a journey into the past and the future. In this small fildžan I can almost glimpse the Levantine Arabs bringing the fruit of coffea bush to Constantinople. The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports the opening of the first coffeehouse in İstanbul:

“Until the year 962 (1554-55), in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffeehouses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus, came to the city: they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtalkala, and began to purvey coffee.”

~ Cemal Kafadar, "A History of Coffee", Economic History Congress XIII (Buenos Aires, 2002)

But I can also forsee the future: those sludgy grounds left at the bottom serve for tasseography, an old tradition of fortune telling. The cup is turned onto the saucer and the symbols formed are deciphered by some older woman.The flavour of cardamom and sometimes kakule (pistachio grains whole seed "pods", pistachio-looking like of the cardamom plant) settles in the mouth, lingering for a long time, like the prophecies revealed by the symbols on the cup. “Will they ever come true?”, one wonders gallivanting through the medieval alleys.



In Kapali Carci (the Grand Bazaar with the 1000 shops) one comes across all kinds of scented products. Fragrant balms for the hair, henna paste for body and hair, oils of rare plants and fossilised resins, like lumps of gum benjamin (benzoin), Turkish sweetgum (Liquidabar orientalis) and all the spices of Arabia. If one persists there are manuscripts, or should I say copies of old manuscripts posing as older than they are, with recipes using them. One of them is "Theriaca Andromachi Senioris", a Venice treacle recipe that uses benzoin appearing in the 1686 d'Amsterdammer Apotheek, a honey- or molasses-based alexipharmic composition once thought to be effective against venom. First developed in Italy, then exported throughout Europe from Venice and ending in Constantinople. If only the offered manuscript were authentic…

And of course there is Anatolian rose Otto (from Ottoman) which leaves an intense trail of almost fruity scent to one’s hands after handling the precious little bottles, with the name Gül (Rose) written on the label. I try to recall if any commercial fragrance captures the intense, decadent and yet also fresh odour of such an essence and come up with none. One is hard pressed not to haggle with the local sellers who are expecting so and the little treasure is secured into a handbag, folded with a silk handkerchief depicting seagulls. It will linger in a drawer with old, frayed photos of ancestors, impregnating their precious memory with the essence of the place they begrudgingly had to leave.



To be continued....

Pic shows Ortaköy Mosque (officially Büyük Mecidiye Camii, the Grand Imperial Mosque of Sultan Abdülmecid) and the Bosphorus Bridge by cafefernando.com.
Translation of lyrics by the author.
Clip from the intro of Greek-Turkish film Politiki Kouzina, uploaded on Youtube by JasonSeaman1.