I continue about Istanbul with my most treasured experiences while visiting last summer. This is the first:
THE DANCER IN THE ARASTA BAZAAR
Late in the afternoon I saw Istanbul for the first time from the plane. Surreal, dreamlike, it was barely visible through clouds that were like scraps of tattered old lace. It seemed like there were vast expanses of taupe-colored earth from which Istanbul’s matching magnificent buildings had sprouted like occasional arabesques of indigenous vegetation.
Later my first excursion from my room was at night. Serpentine tendrils of hauntingly exotic music lured me into a small bazaar. In an open-air courtyard I found musicians playing instruments I’d never seen. While the spectators smoked water pipes, a large man I would never thought capable of the grace of a dancer appeared and started turning slowly, eyes closed. His elegance, the softness of his motions…like a whisper on the breeze, held me spellbound. I was standing close enough to see an expression of spiritual purity that I didn’t believe could be faked.
The dancer wore a long brown, cylindrical hat; a black belt around his considerable girth; a white, waist-length jacket; and a flowing white skirt that reached his ankles. As he turned the full skirt slowly bellowed out around him in a circle, undulating with waves like the sea. Dimly I realized I was seeing a “whirling dervish,” but those words, with my culture’s relegating him to the status of some amusing curiosity, were immediately forgotten. Eyes still closed, ever so slowly, he raised his arms toward the moon and stars as he continued to turn, his long skirt a pearly white ocean rippling around him. He seemed to turn to that impossibly beautiful music forever, spinning through all eternity, while no one watching made a sound, and he never once opened his eyes.
