ISTANBUL'S FLOWER PASSAGE
by Dick Caldwell

 A typical Sunday evening on Istiklal Street in Istanbul.  The Mediterranean volta is in full swing — you can see the same thing in Greek villages and Italian piazzas — everyone gets dressed up, families go for a walk, girls (and often boys) walk arm in arm, lovers parade and show off for their friends.  The girls' shy glances and giggles, the strutting swagger of the fancy lads, makes me feel that I'm watching a ritual that has lasted for centuries, not just for the age of the Flower Passage but back through the Ottoman and Byzantine empires, probably back to ancient Byzantium itself.  They may be wearing the latest MTV-inspired fashions, but there's a sense of continuity with the past that transcends the clothing and ubiquitous cell phones.  Music (and rather high quality, surprisingly) resounds from record stores, the San Francisco look-alike trolley rings its bell, the occasional car or taxi makes life a little dangerous on this nominally pedestrian avenue. 
 My friends and I had left Sultanahmet (Istanbul's tourist area, site of Agia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi, etc.) and taken a taxi to Taksim, the main square of downtown "new" Istanbul.  We left the taxi at Taksim so we could enjoy the 20-minute walk down Istiklal to the Cicek Pasaji, the "Flower Passage" that was our ultimate destination most nights in Istanbul.  We walked by Ali Baba Restaurant, once rather good but now ruined by the busloads of tourists, past Vakko department store (eight floors of the Saks 5th Avenue of Turkey), and soon arrived at the ornate entrance of the Flower Passage.
 An inscription above the entrance reads "Cite de Pera;" during the Ottoman Empire this district of Pera was the home of foreign embassies, and remains of old, typically French, architecture delight those who avert their gaze from street level to the old buildings' upper stories and roofs.  A spectacularly baroque gate across from the Flower Passage is the entrance to what is now a lise (lycee) and was once an embassy. 
 The Flower Passage itself is a small L-shaped galleria, four stories high with a glass roof.  One end of the L opens on Istiklal, the other on a long covered alley which is one of the great delights of Istanbul.  It is both market and dining area:  first about 100 feet of fast food — midya tava (fried mussels on a stick), kokorets (grilled innards in pita), icli kofte (steak tartare wrapped in a lettuce leaf) — then a glorious fruit and vegetable market open til midnight, and finally about 60 restaurants packed to overflowing, with gypsy bands competing from most of the restaurants in raucous cacaphony.  You can't walk through here without being jostled and importuned, but it's an experience not to be missed.
 Back at the Flower Passage galleria we arrive at our destination, the Kimene ("Who Cares?") restaurant.  Many years ago I entered this old establishment and saw on the wall a UNESCO calendar featuring a different country for each month; that month was America's turn and the picture chosen to represent America was of three USC cheerleaders!  Since I taught at USC I recognized this as an omen, and I have returned to Kimene hundreds of times since. 
 Greeted like old friends by the staff and waiters, kissed by the owner Osman, we take a table and  order the usual (Albanian liver, mussels, eggplant salad, some shish kebab and fish), and a bottle of Cankaya wine (Cankaya is the Beverly Hills of Ankara, where the prime minister and president live, and the wine of this name is predictably good).  The house gypsies spot us (most restaurants here have their own gypsy combo — clarinet, drum, violin) and come over to play a sing-along called "Oy, oy, Emine" and "Happy Birthday"  (in Turkish it's "Iyi ki Dodun" and sung in a minor key, a rendition so bizarre that I have a birthday every time I come here). 
 While we eat, some of the local characters come over to say hello.  From Chair One of Table One, his station for decades, comes Mr. Careful (his real name is Erhan and he says he's a retired bank director).  For those he hasn't met he recites his familiar lines in fractured English — his name in French is Monsieur Attention, he has drunk nine tons of raki (anise-flavored liquor) during the past twelve years and he smokes each day eight packs of Birince cigarettes (tiny filterless cigarettes that cost less than a dime a pack — he keeps a pack in every pocket and three in his socks).  He once worked in Libya for almost a year managing a restaurant, but had to leave.  Why?  No ladies!  No alcohol!
 Mr. Careful is a short and chubby, red-cheeked, well-dressed man in his late fifties.  If you ask why he has this name, he puts a finger beside his nose and says secretively that he has always been very careful.  Once a local newspaper did a full-page spread declaring him the King of Beyoglu (the district of Pera), with photos showing the King drinking champagne from a starlet's shoe.
 With him is his friend Mustafa, somewhat older and fatter, and always dressed as if it were winter.  He insists that he is a retired police captain (although his cronies all laugh when he says this) and therefore has lifetime free admission to the most expensive night clubs of Istanbul.
 There are many other familiar faces, and even familiar sounds amid the horrific din of crowded diners and howling gypsies:  the old lady who plays an accordion, and Cengiz, the blind cumbus (steel banjo) player.  If there are women in our group, sooner or later Umit appears with a rose or corsage for each of them.  He owns the flower stall next to Kimene Restaurant and has shown up with gifts every time I've come to the Flower Passage (though I've never bought as much as a bud from him).
 The Flower Passage has this name because once upon a time it was one of the great flower markets of Istanbul (remember, the Turks invented tulips).  Now the only shop selling flowers is Umit's tiny stall, but this lone enterprise is a significant link to the past.  And so, for that matter, is the whole Flower Passage.  When I sit in Kimene, watching humanity stream by (there's no better place to recognize the multi-ethnic background of modern Turks) and listening to the gypsies and the diners, who never stop talking and singing and sometimes dancing (every Turk knows all the words to each song the gypsies play), it's easy to imagine myself transported back to the glory days of the Ottoman Empire.  People from all over Europe and the Empire came to Istanbul, one of the world's great capitals, and when the time came to relax and enjoy life at its fullest they must have come to the Flower Passage.

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