The Great Stambouli Saloon Series/The Cirek Pasaji
Rahe, Paul A.
~"YY•"Y"'`"•)~ a~ a lvaalA i)t Vl.I1Ci1J matinee, we are left basically with a Jewish intellectual soap opera. Allen once told an interviewer that when he was making Interiors he kept watching soap...
...As some of the besotted rose to dance around her, a street acrobat entered and began to defy the force of gravity and good sense...
...GOVERNOR GARLIC by Taki I think it was about six years ago that I wrote in the London Spectator about a match at Wimbledon that was won after a long struggle by Pat Dupre, an American college student, against the all-Italian boy of the time, Adriano Panatta...
...Well, to judge by the Italian ambassador's reaction to the story, you'd have thought I had accused Sophia Loren of wearing falsies, or called Joe DiMaggio a Puerto Rican...
...One can, of course, search out a bit of New York if one has a mind to...
...It was then that the whole thing made sense and I remembered what I' should have had in mind from the start: The month-long, Muslim festival of Ramazan had begun at sundown that day...
...The city has many virtues, but its bars are not among them...
...And, as we passed, we noticed young boys kneeling on the stairs leading up from the street...
...a legpull—maybe) does not redeem a film from the condition of soap opera...
...Handy Andy is an attorney with a lucrative practice in New York City...
...He has a hypocritical and opportunistic streak in him reminiscent of that other great spender of other people's money, the senior senator from the only state McGovern carried, and has as well a propensity for appealing to the lowest common denominator, envy...
...and, at night, after the evening meal, the mosques were full...
...First the ambassador threatened to sue me, but after he was assured that it is not libelous to say someone smells of garlic, he asked my editor to fire "that greasy little Greek" (which I think is libelous as hell...
...He is also totally dishonest when he poses as a political centrist...
...Scattered through the side streets in between these hills, there are hundreds of smaller structures built with the same end in mind...
...I have in mind the ciek Pasaji...
...Mencken would have extended his wholehearted approval...
...The cisek Pasaji is a collection of emporia to which the learned, late, and much lamented H.L...
...By the time we left, we were filled to the gills with the good stuff...
...No one seemed to pay much attention to the artist who offered to draw pencil sketches of the customers—but when the well-endowed blonde at the next table stood up to shake her ample belly, you could almost hear those sitting ' nearby mutter the old Ottoman saying: "She is so beautiful that she has to go through the door sideways...
...enter the one establishment that no pub crawler stranded on the boundary between Europe and Asia can afford to miss...
...To be fair, I should give him the benefit of the doubt where Europe is concerned...
...Hannah and Her Sisters is in this class of picture...
...As my grandaddy used to say, honesty and integrity do not begin and end in one's wallet...
...When he finished his tune, a gypsy cut in with a wind instrument while his companion danced about with a tambourine...
...Istanbul is a city of mosques in THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 33 precisely the way that Rome is a city of churches...
...We were making our way down Istiklal Caddesi and then through the backstreets of Beyoglu to my apartment in the neighboring district of Cihangir...
...kebab, arnavut cigeri ("Albanian liver"), and other Turkish delights...
...The heading Politique Internationale is as misleading this time around as some of Mario's pronouncements...
...But it is Cuomo's total ignorance of the world generally, and foreign affairs in particular, that has me already looking into Swiss real estate...
...Some spend their idle hours in the plush establishments inside the Hilton and the Sheraton hotels, but the more discerning lounge lizards make their way to the Plaza Bar in the Manny Hanny building and while away their evenings listening to the lovely afak Yaprak sing "As Time Goes By" and other ballads of yesteryear and today...
...THE GREAT STAMBOULI SALOON SERIES ' _ds1(Ift `c e o o~o'~o j , ,~ ° tll°o 1 .III, -_-Ili 1, ill 110111111 lit ~ .. 1111161ii1 i ill willun pp( 111 11 , r Illlllllllllllllilll , YWII 4lYdl1 1~ I Ma., THE CICEK PASAJI An American doing a pub crawl through Europe would be well advised to give Istanbul a miss...
...The only difference between their messy lives and those depicted on afternoon television is that Allen's characters have to work off heavy doses of Upper West Side angst along with their sex drives...
...There are also intellectual honesty and integrity, and the creation of conditions that breed honesty and integrity in government...
...Eliot's philandering with Lee and subsequent reconciliation with Hannah are utterly predictable...
...That night there was no one...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986...
...Now the last thing I want to do, dear American Spectator readers, is to try and prove to you that the governor of New York is speaking through his Mezzogiornian hat...
...Everything was finally settled amicably, however, especially after His Excellency was informed that some of my richest friends happened to be Italians...
...It was as if Istanbul had become a ghost town—or so it seemed up to the moment when we came upon what might have been termed a gathering of the ghosts...
...The Italian diplomat's sensitivity to garlic came to mind recently when the Capo of the Empire State uttered his by now famous remark that there is no Mafia, and that to suggest there is, means that one is anti-lasagna and therefore won't be voting for him for President in the near future...
...It was not going to be easy for either of us to get up the next morning...
...The restaurants were deserted during the day...
...He was worried that people might begin to think he's full of tortellini...
...In their justly popular guide-book Strolling Through Istanbul, Hilary Sumner-Boyd and John Freely call it the liveliest and most colorful spot in Beyoglu, or in all of Istanbul for that mat-ter...
...One of the simplest of these—the Muhyiddin Molla Fenari Camii—was built in the sixteenth century on the boundary between Beyoglu proper and Cihangir by Sinan, the greatest of the Ottoman architects...
...Here, in Istanbul's infamous "Passage of Flowers," a kaldirim muhendisi can feast his eyes on a passing kaldirim siipiirgesi and, if he has a mind to, ac-cost a kaldirim Sicegi—which is to say, here "a sidewalk superintendent" can consider the merits of "a sidewalk broom" as she sways her hips rhythmically to and fro, and then ponder whether to seek the services of a chunky professional seductress of the sort that the Turks call "a sidewalk flower...
...Here again, the lights were on...
...After all, he has visited Italy once, and purportedly stopped to refuel at Shannon airport on his way back, where I assume he inhaled some pizza, washed down with a Guinness...
...The Ancient Greeks, in their infinite wisdom, always believed that one reveals his true character during a crisis...
...Cuomo certainly revealed his when—as a fellow politician put it"he invented a moral crusade to justify his out-of-control ambition to be President," an out-of-control ambition that allowed him to build up a $9 million campaign chest for 1986, most of which came from the kind of people he has always ridiculed the Republicans for dealing with: lobbyists, investors, big-time shysters, and real estate developers...
...I had also complained that their shouting in the middle of a point had filled the air with garlic smells that made some of the ball girls ill...
...There is nothing Internationale about the Capo of the Empire State, and I don't care if I'm not allowed to write the word pasta or catch another whiff of garlic for another six years...
...or doff your coat and tie, don dirty blue jeans, an old shirt, and a filthy jacket, and make your way into old Beyoglu—where, if you slip past the serried ranks of mustachioed men who march down Istiklal Caddesi, you can Paul A. Rahe is living in Istanbul on a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs...
...People who know him speak about how insular our Mario is, a man who concentrates his mind on the tiniest details...
...He had flown in the night before on the Yugoslav airline JAT...
...They make coffee and bananas, Mario...
...Thisyear, the fasting from dawn to dusk would be particularly difficult: Ramazan stretched from late May until a day or two before the summer solstice and included a good many of the longest days in the year...
...Though he was scheduled to reach Istanbul before 10 p.m., my friend actually arrived well after three in the morning...
...The match has stayed in my mind because of the reaction of one prominent Italian to my article...
...As the evening progressed, the revelers gathered courage and the volume rose...
...It was almost more than I could manage, just keeping afloat on the tidal wave of sight and sound...
...Ordinarily, at that hour, Istiklal Caddesi is filled with throngs of Anatolians...
...The characters are well observed and often come out with marvelous lines, but when they actually begin to react to one another—well, we might as well tune into "The Young and the Restless...
...On this occasion, as so often before, that airline had justified the prejudices of those who argue that JAT is really an acronym for jamais a temps...
...But he seems not to have figured it out...
...moral ambiguity does not mingle with the organ music...
...Our condition may explain why I failed to grasp immediately that something was amiss...
...The other characters are so shallow that Allen has no trouble landing them all in a happy ending—an ending which belies the whole tenor of what has gone before...
...But he knew enough, I gather, to declare that he was opposed to Administration policy there, and to suggest that he would not allow New York National Guardsmen to be trained in Honduras...
...A hush had descended over the city—a hush rendered all the more dramatic by contrast with the raucous setting that we had just left...
...Few Turks seem to have been deterred from per-forming what was required...
...And did honest Mario apologize or give the slightest explanation as to why all those special interests were suddenly funneling money to his campaign...
...atop each sits a grand and commanding Muslim place of worship—with all but the Byzantine Agya Sofya Camii (until 1453 the mother church of the Greek Orthodox faith) constructions thrown up by the Ottoman Sultans for the greater glory of Allah...
...That day, I had been trying to satisfy myself that I finally understood the relationship between by Paul A. Rahe religion and politics in modern Turkey...
...Not that Cuomo is that naive, mind you...
...The wandering Alaskan was, if anything, in worse shape than I was...
...Or with a macaroni-forked tongue, for that matter...
...Can you imagine how he would organize White House softball games...
...I do not frequent the cicek Pasaji, but I will confess to having deadened my intellect there a time or two, and I can vouch for the fact that in warm weather this description is apt...
...Inside we could see virtually the en-tire population of the neighborhood, all on their knees being led in prayer...
...As recently as last December he dodged questions on Nicaragua by saying he was not too well versed on Central America...
...Since the Pasaj is common ground to the local fish and flower markets, it is a museum of Istanbul sights and sounds and smells, and every odd and interesting character in Beyoglu is sure to pass through there in the course of an afternoon or an evening...
...No, it wasn't Mario Cuomo—Flushing Meadow is his turf...
...But I digress...
...But whether they sip their double martinis, guzzle their Glenfiddich's, and seek the palace of wisdom by the proverbial road of excess, those who frequent the Plaza Bar will never—while there—be tempted by the suspicion that they are, in fact, in Istanbul...
...No, what I wish to do is simply point out that here is a man who has won one election in his lifetime, and who owes his position in the forefront of Democratic politics to a speech he gave a couple of years ago on how awful America was under Herbert Hoover...
...Having characters exchange knowledgeable tidbits about classical music and mention that uicy nave oeen reaamg Nietzsche and Socrates (yes, Socrates who never wrote anything...
...If you look at his record, he is the biggest of spenders, squandering with a profligacy that would have put Nelson Rockefeller to shame...
...We tried the raki, found it watered down, and switched to beer, all while munching As...
...Across from our table, an old man played a violin...
...The subject had almost become an obsession—but it, and nearly everything else, soon slipped my mind...
...In Istanbul, however much one may try, one cannot escape the theologicopolitical question for long—not even by getting sozzled in the cisek Pasaji...
...To get a proper drink in this increasingly Anatolian city, you have to journey in a manner of speaking abroad: that is, unless you drive out to the Bebek Bar to gaze upon the Bosphorus and hob with the Stambouli knobs...
...Within a stone's throw and in Cihangir itself sits yet another small mosque—the Beyoglu Firuzaga Camii-i 5erifi...
...Never, however, have I seen it as animated as it was one particular evening last May when I visited the Flower Passage in the company of a visiting fireman who had come to Istanbul to recover from untold debauchery committed in the bars of Alaska...
...His physical clock was still set on Anchorage time to the extent that it was set on any'time at all...
...A soap opera is schematic...
...It was 10:30 p.m...
...There are enough Mafia trials going on at this very minute to convince even Mario Cuomo that the Mafia was not invented by Hollywood fascists trying to discredit him, nor by central casting either (who are the ones Cuomo should be angry with, and not my friend Joe Sobran...
...Allen once told an interviewer that when he was making Interiors he kept watching soap operas to make sure that he wasn't producing one himself...
...While describing the disgraceful behavior of Panatta's supporters (this was before McEnroe had reduced the hallowed atmosphere of Wimbledon to that of a female wrestling hall) I had referred to them as "the spaghetti brigade...
...and as a consequence, the entire tone of life in the city had changed...
...In good weather the customers drink at marble-topped beer barrels in the alley itself, dining on nuts or shrimp bought from passing peddlers, occasionally serenaded by a wandering street-musician...
...That night and each succeeding night, the drums would sound through Istanbul and every city in the land to re-mind the faithful to rise and eat—for they were barred from all food and drink through the daylight hours...
...As we approached this small, square, green building, I noticed that the lights were on...
...Turkey is a far cry from Saudi Arabia and Iran, but the influence of Islam over its semi-secular regime is still strong enough to keep respectable Stambouli women off the streets and their menfolk, for the most part, at home after dark...
...Within the confines of ancient Constantinople, just across the Golden Horn from Beyoglu, stand seven hills...
...and the characters, as they go about their philandering, are not meant to transcend their as-signed indiscretions, even if provided with a compensating dose of guilt...
...Of course not...
...At the soccer match held that day to determine the city championship, Fenerbahce had tied Besikta, and the fans had descended on the Pasaj to celebrate the fact that this noble struggle would have to be continued yet another day...
...Beyoglu on the opposite shore is arabbit warren of tiny streets littered with mosques...
...Which Cuomo has not done, but then neither have I. Because I, too, have misrepresented myself to you...
...Like Jackass Carter, he trusts almost no one, and his closest adviser is his son, Andrew...
...7ttki Theodoracopulos is a European editor of The American Spectator...
...The Pasaj is lined with boisterous meyhanes, raffish curbside taverns where one can enjoy a tasty snack washed down with draft beer or raki, that powerful and intellect-deadening national anise drink...
...POLITIQ UE INTERNATIONALS...
Vol. 19 • May 1986 • No. 5
