Book offers insight into İstanbul through Eastern authors’ musings

For centuries, travelers, artists and writers have visited İstanbul to witness the mysteries of this beautiful city. Hundreds of Western writers penned books about or inspired by this city. Moreover, many Turkish authors, from time to time, referred to the writings of these famous writers and quoted them in their own works, thus offering their readers a view of İstanbul as seen from the West. But what were the writers of the East doing in the meantime? Unfortunately their musings about İstanbul have not been well known -- until now.

A new book published in March by the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality's cultural enterprise Kültür A.Ş. offers a collective look at Eastern intellectuals' musings and observations related to İstanbul. Titled “Doğulu Yazarlar Gözüyle İstanbul” (“İstanbul in the Eyes of Eastern Writers”), the book, published in Turkish and English, is the follow-up to Kültür A.Ş.'s two previous books that featured essays on İstanbul by foreign writers, “Yabancı Gazetecilerin Gözüyle İstanbul” (“İstanbul with the Perspectives of Correspondents,” 2007) and “Batılı Gezginlerin Gözüyle İstanbul” (“İstanbul in the Eyes of Western Travelers,” 2006).

As Turkey evolves toward once more becoming a heavyweight in its region, how Eastern artists and intellectuals perceived İstanbul is an important question that is addressed in “İstanbul in the Eyes of Eastern Writers.” The book aims to provide clues on how İstanbul influenced language, literature, arts and even daily life in the East -- the vast region that stretches from North Africa to India and Pakistan.

The majority of the writings in the book are essays in which intellectual heavyweights of the Islamic world reveal their love for İstanbul based on their personal experiences and memories of the city. The book, edited by Doğan Ertuğrul, is made up of articles by 13 prominent men of letters, including English-Sudanese author Jamal Mahjoub, Syrian poet and essayist Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, better known by his pen name Adonis, and Saudi poet Abir Zaki. Murat Düzyol's photographs of İstanbul accompany the articles in the book.

Adonis, in his piece in the book, calls İstanbul a city that deserves to be “the capital of the future,” while Zaki labels it a “chaotic city” in which material and spirit coexist simultaneously. Lebanese novelist-journalist Iman Humaydan Younes compares İstanbul with her hometown of Beirut.

Adonis: İstanbul is an organic meeting point where man and landscape mingle … and which has everything it takes to be a matchless capital of culture. Among all cities that used to serve as capitals before, capitals of the present day and the capitals of the future, I deem İstanbul to be one of the most significant of the latter. It is not only a project of objective and organic expansion, but [İstanbul] it's in a position which this project is ... put into practice.

Jamal Mahjoub: This city is trying to soak up anything that comes to it. This is a task we all face somehow: settling the contradictions and paradoxes inside. … Stuck between an increasingly neoliberal Europe on one side and an East torn by war and despair, with economic and political deadlock on the other side, İstanbul is a metaphor of odds for our current states of mind. ... This city ... still has a lot to tell about its experiences engraved with blood on its soil.”

Abir Zaki: Full of contradictions, outstandingly chaotic but all its features are born along the banks of an unhurriedly flowing river. … One that effortlessly blends the old with the new, the East with the West, the earthly with the spiritual; although the mix of identities is a cliché, one cannot escape the thought for even a single minute, with its urban cliché. A city that symbolizes everything inspiring about mystery and sincerity.

Aamer Hussein: Many times here I felt as though I was in the East, but this was a version of the East that has faced the quandaries of modernity. Or to put it more clearly, it was a micro-cosmos that unfurled its own path with its continental differences. Conservativeness or customs might have weight outside of İstanbul, but when here, inside the city, I always thought of myself as being [in a city that is] clinched at Asia's furthermost coast but [that is] extremely cosmopolitan.