They were participating in an ancient if somewhat chilly ritual that occurs every Jan. 6, or the Epiphany: a symbolic re-enactment of the baptism of Christ. Metropolitan Athanasios of Chalcedon (today’s Kadıköy) threw a wooden cross into the fast-running waters, and off the three raced to be the first to retrieve it.“Three” is a number laden with allegory in the Orthodox faith. In Western Christianity, the Epiphany was when the three magi came with their gifts, each one representing a different part of the known world -- Africa, Asia and Europe. This would seem to reinforce İstanbul’s claim to be not just the European capital of culture, but also the capital of multiculturalism, where magi in swimming trunks meet and (as the İstanbul Olympic bid slogan would have it) “where the continents meet.” I was warned, however, against reading too much into the fact that there were three swimmers. “There could be two, there could be 20 -- it depends on who wants get wet,” I was told after a phone call to the patriarchate.
Of course, there are few problems with İstanbul’s claim to be the meeting place of different ideas. When I say the throwing of the cross happens “every” Epiphany, the truth is that this custom has only recently been revived. There are ceremonies in other parts of the city, but this is the first time that it has taken place in Kuzguncuk since 1955. Why the neighborhood should have suspended the practice that particular year is pretty much self-explanatory. That September there occurred a series of riots in İstanbul (some of literature goes so far as to call them pogroms) aimed at the Greek population after what we now know was a government-staged provocation. It is why the custom should be revived now, when the there are so few Orthodox left in the city, which requires more explanation.
A lot of water has flowed down the Bosporus since, but even all these years later, the ceremony took place under heavy guard -- a phalanx of police accompanied the procession from the local church of Ayios Yorgios down to the shore. This was, no doubt, a sensible precaution given the recent brouhaha surrounding the patriarch’s controversial interview on the American current affairs program “60 Minutes” and the far more startling newspaper revelation that İstanbul’s religious minorities were to be targeted by the foot soldiers in the Ergenekon conspiracy.
However, the whiff of a threat did not cloud the occasion. Rather, like a warm spell in winter that brings out the buds, it was a day that brought forth recollections. I managed to snap a photo of two Greek women returning to Kuzguncuk, where they were born, and who recall the throwing of the cross 55 years ago. “I’m too young to remember,” Recep, who runs the grocery store across the street, told me, but his father remembered it well -- along with the occasional funeral procession from the church which would wind its way up the hill to the Greek cemetery. Perhaps there will be another ceremony again next year, but there was the sense that we were witnessing something like a full eclipse or a meteor shower, one of those things that happen once in a generation.
I have lamented in this column before that living in İstanbul is a battle against nostalgia. The streets are not so much paved with gold as other peoples’ memories, and most of the time we walk through an urban landscape unaware. I have an archaeologist friend who urges her students to take pictures of anything that catches their attention because there is a reasonable chance that the next time they pass, it will be gone. Why do people dive into the Bosporus in the middle of winter? I suppose it is to remember that they still exist.
