Istanbul

Istanbul bustles. At a long row sweetmeats are being sold - baklava, green and brown bonbons, angular, elongated delicacies with honey and pistachio, or candy-floss wrapped in plastic. There are people everywhere on the grass, it is almost impossible to walk about. True, no one does that around here ... the lawn is for resting. Those who came prepared lie on carpets and blankets. Those who just happen to be here settle on a large pile of newspapers, placing their shoes carefully beside. Women wrapped in shawls with their dark-eyebrowed husbands, children, relatives and grandmother.

Istanbul bustles. This is the centre of the city and today is Sunday. At the entrance of the Blue Mosque people stand in long lines in a slow-moving queue. In front of the door not everyone manages to take off their shoes quickly and cram them into the small bag given to all visitors. A guard with a serious look in his eyes checks every woman and covers bare shoulders and uncovered heads with a blue gown, even helping to clasp it. Inevitably, this slows down the queue, but no one is in a hurry.

The mosque also throngs, though in the part fenced off for men many are praying absorbed, taking no notice of the constantly teeming crowd. They lower their foreheads to the floor, apparently unaware of children running around and tourists taking photographs. People are chatting and the mosque is also alive, just like the streets, only more majestically and ceremonially. On the red carpet tourists sitting cross-legged are trying to take in the sudden torrent of stimuli, admiring the blue stained-glass windows and the barefoot people. The guard sometimes appears, commanding the slipped-off shawls back to their places, but it is difficult to keep the crowd in hand. In fact, it is not so necessary as most people somehow instinctively have respect.

The evening is long. It is nearly midnight before the streets become quiet and the music stops, which sometimes coincides with the call for prayer from the mosque. Now it is Monday, but almost nothing changes. Perhaps the bustle is a bit softer and people's faces are a bit more serious, yet the streets are still teeming with people, all of whom seem to have something to do with each other. It is not difficult to elicit a smile or engage in conversation, even with those who do not want to sell something. Nor is it difficult to discover the city's sights, the past of Istanbul - you only have to follow the tourists who stream from one hub to the next ... the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace.

In the Topkapi, the former palace of the sultans, it is easy to distinguish between those doing the sights and the pilgrims, here for the relics of the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle - for Prophet Mohammed's mantle, sword and tooth. Topkapi itself is a city within a city of 12 million. It surely needs more than one day to take in. It is a realm of treasures and diamonds, old caftans and huge thrones. Not only the people of long by-gone days, but also the objects have adventurous histories. For example, the fascinating Kaşıkçı diamond, the most valuable item in the palace, which was found on the Egrikapi rubbish tip by a poor man who exchanged it for three wooden spoons. Or the Topkapi dagger, which was made as a gift for the Persian Shah Nadin, but by the time the envoys got there the shah had been murdered, so the gift bearers turned back with the dagger.

The harem recalling heavy, aromatic scents and whose name already suggests something intimate and forbidden, is even more exciting than the lavish objects. This is the world of insoluble enigma, which still imposes silence, not only because of the prohibiting notices. A mysterious, unknown world, where only one man, the sultan, could enter. There are only suppositions and surmises about its operation, which functioned according to a closed, strict hierarchy. Behind the walls a power struggle, perhaps more cruel than those between men, was conducted with murders and intrigue. The strict rule was sometimes overridden by the unwritten yet stronger rules of human nature, for example love, which can overwrite everything.

Sultan Suleyman I, the Magnificent, ruled the Ottoman Empire for 46 years. The 'Sultanate of Women' with his favourite concubine, Hürrem, began during his heavy-handed, even cruel reign. Hürrem first saw the light of day as Aleksandra Lisowska, the daughter of a Ruthenian clergyman, though she was taken to be a slave at the age of 10 and brought to Suleyman's harem. For the sultan it was allegedly love at first sight. First, she became his favourite concubine, later his wife, moreover his state and political advisor, thus contradicting the fundamental laws of the harem. She gave birth to four children and used her extremely strong influence to have the sultan kill his first born son together with the son's mother, and to get her own son on the throne. He became Selim II, the worst sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

From the northeastern corner of Topkapi there is a wonderful view over the Bosporus, the border between Europe and Asia. Even from this distance it is quite clear how much calmer the Asian side is compared to the European bustle. In the picture-postcard background there is the graciously slender first Bosporus bridge, celebrating its 35th birthday this month - visibly at the best time of its life.

Leaving Topkapi behind, outward from the Sultanahmet quarter, it can be felt that the shops are different, the atmosphere is more informal, somehow more Turkish. We are approaching the Grand Bazaar, one of the world's largest indoor markets. Anything can be bought at this labyrinth-like place, and it would be difficult to find a language in which the traders could not at least say "Good afternoon. How are you?". It is easy to recognise tourists in the crowd, and the sellers emerge and shout: just see, just taste, just try! Then the bargaining begins. Even the uninitiated do well, since here it's in the air as a game - I know that you also know that we both know. The Spice Bazaar at the end of the Galata Bridge, directly by the New Mosque, is far more appealing than the vast and unfathomable Grand Bazaar. It is simultaneously smaller and more human, and the One Thousand and One Nights are here, piled up on the stalls - mint, pistachio, saffron and cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, clove and aniseed, a dozen types of dates and raisin, dried fruits, various nuts, dried peppers, aubergine and okra and, of course, the teas - orange, apple, kiwi and lemon.

"This is like Viagra," says Ehran giving me a wink, while scooping a fruit mixture in a bag. Then he brings me a glass of apple tea, elma çay. I cannot understand why it has not yet conquered the world. We are talking under strings of dried aubergine. "Can one make a living from this?" I point along the long bazaar row, at the seemingly overwhelming competition. "From this?" He looks at me. "Those with a shop here are all millionaires, even if they only rent the premises. One day I will also be a boss." He smiles proudly then begins to explain. "In August there are lots of Spaniards. They love shopping, mainly for carpets. Then from the end of September, when Ramadan ends, the Germans come. They mostly buy spices and lots of them. And the Americans, they also go in for carpets, and saffron, which is weighed by the gramme. Price-wise it's like gold. And Hungarians?" He smiles at me. "They rather look around ... like the Australians."

Nevertheless, I select some fruit in a brown bag - purple figs as big as a fist and large healthy pomegranates. I stand amidst a plethora of colours and scents, looking at the piles of fruit. There is some small unfamiliar fruit in a box. I am trying to figure out what it is when the seller smiles and hands me one. "It's good for the heart," he says. While I am nibbling at it, I look over the stall. The market is thronging. People are making offers, bargaining, chatting, filling the space between the stalls. Women in headscarves and men with broad smiles - a genuine Istanbul atmosphere. I select the change from my purse, gather up the bags in my arms and set off towards the city.

Anna Nagy