Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her column about her recommendations for a good read, and life as she sees it ...
In case you didn't know, it's the Muslim month of Ramadan right now. It started last week, and week one is always a little fractious. Turks love their food and not eating from sunup to sundown gets them pretty ratty.
I watched one car towing another in a busy Istanbul street at 5pm. The towed driver had obviously put his foot on the brake while they were stopped at a light, and forgotten to take it off when the towing car pulled away. Of course, the tow rope snapped with a huge sound like gunshot and all hell broke loose.
Pedestrians, thinking it really was a gun, were yelling, and the towing driver was yelling at the towee, and the drivers in the cars behind were yelling and beeping at everyone, and a deranged man on the third floor of a building started throwing his clothes down into the street.
I asked a lady near me what was going on and she just said, "It's the first week of Ramazan."
Apart from first week jitters, it's very beautiful - all the mosques string lights from the minarets and there's lots of music and huge free meals for the poor in every street each night.. I'm not so sure about the 4am drumming which lets everyone know to get up and eat before the sun rises. Certainly, in the rumpty flat I was renting with four different mosques less than 100 metres away, I was in no danger of staying asleep. I was spending five days in Istanbul and had planned to be much like an observant Muslim - not fasting, but certainly dieting, no booze and just studying Turkish. I thought five days of pure living would be a nice change.
This is a massive city - officially, they say there are 13 million people, but there could be as many as seven million more who have no official status. In such a huge place, how could I run into friends at the Istanbul Modern Art Museum?
The pure life ended before it even started.
So many of you had recommended reading Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence since I was spending time in Turkey. I couldn't resist poking my nose into the mad museum about it.
It's fascinating and if I tell you it's displaying a collection of valueless things that a fictional character was meant to have stolen and hoarded, you won't think it sounds a bit interesting. Who wants to see 4213 cigarette butts (they are beautiful) or ceramic dogs or a homemade quince grater?
It is quite the strangest museum I have ever been in, and the first thing I did afterwards was to sit down and read the book from cover to cover.
It's been hugely controversial, not just in Turkey where Pamuk has always been outspoken and in trouble over all sorts of issues, especially freedom of speech, but also amongst readers. Many people have found it slow and tedious and ask who wants to read about spoilt, rich, young men wanting everything, but others fall in love with the way Pamuk describes the obsessed Kemal's fascination with the more mundane, middle class life of the girl he is in love with.
The most dangerous aspect of the book for me was him identifying the happiest moment of his life. Imagine knowing at the time what the happiest moment was, and realising you would never experience that much joy again.
I adored it but it's caused me anxiety as well. While I was engrossed, I went to the beauty salon for a pedicure.
Sometimes they keep us Western trollops downstairs, and sometimes they take us upstairs to the rooms where the covered girls are. While I waited, I pulled out the book. I heard one of the girls in headscarves saying the name of the book and the author and a few words I recognised that indicated only someone with low morals would be reading it.
I put on a look of scornful boredom and shoved it in my bag hoping they thought I was not that sort of person. But I was desperate to finish it.
I had found a lovely Turkish teacher in Istanbul on the internet and every day Ceylan would text me and tell me where and when to meet. It was such a great way to explore new parts of the city and I highly recommend it as a way of getting to know a place better, especially with someone smart and young and English-speaking who can answer the million and one questions that arise in such a different culture. I really enjoyed being a stranger in a strange place, unlike poor Monsieur Linh in Philippe Claudel's exquisite little book Monsieur Linh and his Child.
Poor Monsieur Linh is a refugee from somewhere beautifully described but undisclosed. He has just a battered suitcase and his brand new grandchild. He doesn't speak a word of the new country's language, and is rejected for his oddness by the other refugees. He manages to make friends with a stranger nevertheless, and listens to the man's story, not understanding a word. It's a delight.
