In a previous life ...

In one of my previous lives, and I've had more than a few so far, I used to bake, and to cook impromptu dinners for other people. 

I loved it but it was another time, before the pressure of a long list of things 'I must do' arrived.  Back then, I was a mother and a housewife, a dog owner, a wanderer but on a very small scale, while following my first husband's teaching career round the South Island of New Zealand.

I moved to Istanbul, the oven didn't work.  No baking was done.  Impromptu dinners were usually the stove-top cooked Persian Chicken.  Two years later and I arrived in Belgium where I was introduced to strange and unknown idea of a gas oven and really, I hated it.  Ours was a dodgy one.  The first and the second. 

Suddenly, due to an almost-Christmas-Eve oven failure, we have an electric one that almost works and voila, we're hosting Stephanie and Catalina tonight.  There's a big fat tasty Shepherds Pie ready to cook, with sultana scones as a dessert.   A 'dessert' fit for an Englishwoman and this homesick kiwi.  And quite immodestly, I'm delighted with the results.

And it seemed, to me, like the perfect way to say thank you to Stephanie and Catalina for inviting us along to our very first English pantomime here in Antwerpen on Sunday afternoon.  It was divine.  So very much what I had read of growing up but never actually attended.

Tot straks from this kiwi in Belgium

Sometimes it's about missing home ...

Sometimes I miss the mighty Clutha River but anyway, this is my city river these days ... the River Schelde, Antwerpen.

Reminiscing the Future ...

I love the way we can bring the past alive in our present ... recalling the people we loved and lived with, the way that they made us feel.  I find everyone is still there, solid memories, whenever I manage to call them up.

7am here in Italy, a cup of coffee from my travel coffee-pot and a packet of Italian shortbread-like biscuits ...voila, I find memories of Nana and pre-breakfast coffees back home at her place, in Invercargill, New Zealand.  Us chatting as she sped through her daily Southland Times, reading the news.

If we could have imagined the future ... ‘Hey Nana, in 2010 I’m going to be sitting at Paola’s kitchen table, in a small and ancient city in Italy, window open so I can hear the sounds of the city waking, drinking coffee, just like you and I are now.’

Nana, who never left New Zealand in all of her life.  I wonder if she dreamed of it.  We never talked of those things.

Or a conversation with Mum ... ‘So I moved to Istanbul in 2003.  You would have loved it!  The people are so friendly, the summers are warmer than here in Mosgiel, the life ... Come with me?

Then Belgium in 2005 and mum would have flown in.  Creating a garden on that first balcony in Antwerp.  And then she would have spent evenings out there, ignoring the mosquitoes, drinking white wine and watching as the sun slipped below the horizon. 

Genova.  I’m sure she would have refused to leave Genova.  We would have laughed about me being my mother’s daughter perhaps, with a need for the sea and serious hills, and maybe we could have planned opening some kind of B&B here, satisfying our oddly hospitable souls and the pleasure we find in knowing people.

And my lovely little sister ... the one who has always been older and wiser, even if she was born after me.  We used to talk across the space between our single beds, back in those days when we shared a room.  If we had imagined my future  life we would have been guilty of inventing wild and untrue tales ... ones where Istanbul, Antwerp and Genova were flights of fanciful imaginations.  Impossible dreams.

She needs to come here now.  I need her in my life.

But Genova ...!

Did you know that swallows fly up and down Via Lorenzo, screeching like hysterically happy young girls playing chase at an out-of-control birthday party.  They amuse me, those swallows, even as I realise I can't begin to caputre their antics with my camera.

And do you know how it sounds to wake to the sounds of a cafe directly below your bedroom window?  The clatter of cups and saucers and everyday Italian conversations that fly in through my window.  The one that is open behind still-closed green shutters, just across the room.

Did you know that this woman, a few thousand miles from home, from past lives, from the people she first loved, finds this Ligiurian city an exquisitely beautiful place to remember and miss them?

Church bells ring in through the open window ... 8am.
Time to begin the new day but Sandra ... come over one day soon.

Ciao from Genova, both feet in the present, as I think what to do with this day.

Past Lives and Memories

I struggled with how to title this post but I knew it had something to do with the nostalgia inspired by scent and a yearning for familiar things…

I woke early here in this Istanbul world and decided to get up. I’ve been alternatively working on photographs, with an occasional detour out into a new book I’m devouring but don’t have much time to read - The Attack by Yasmina Khadra, is worth checking out if you’re looking for an interesting fiction about suicide bombers.

It’s too early for anyone else and there is the promise of hot fresh borek if I’m patient, so I quietly found a banana to eat while my Turkish tea stewed in the top pot.

The banana was ripe and breaking it open delivered me back, just for a moment, to my childhood of bananas bruised by their trip to the river’s edge in our picnic box.

Savouring that scent here in Istanbul, so very far from the world I grew up in made me stop to think about the way that scent has been taking me ‘home’ lately ... the way that smell has become something akin to an album of memories I carry inside of me.

You see, there is a particular soap I use occasionally, it’s one that transports me directly back to a childhood of happy visits to Nana and Grandad’s Invercargill house. And a colleague of mine delights me by smoking the same cigarette brand that Nana once smoked, a long time ago. Gidon is less than excited by this fact that he reminds me of Nana ... as he is younger than me.

Shampoos and conditioners pick me up and transport me but they come from so many periods of this strange life of mine ... there were those childhood toiletries, then there is that one I used in America, another was discovered in Istanbul and they too offer a surprisingly powerful journey into memory.

It’s like that these days but the house is waking now - remembering took longer than I expected and my tea-glass needs refilled. Soon there will be piping hot borek in my tummy and here I am, creating a whole new set of memories in this different someplace else.

If I were in Istanbul today ...

I looked up and realised that as long as this Belgian sky is blue, with jet vapour trails heading in every direction, I’ll never forget living in Istanbul. The vapour trails here take me back to the container ships, ferries, fishing boats, rowboats and every other kind of boat, jostling for space, as they criss-cross the blue of Istanbul's Bosporus.

It made me think ... what I would do if today was a day back in Istanbul? 

I would begin at Taksim Square . I am sure. I would wander along Istiklal Caddesi, remembering to listen for the ancient trams that roll up and down the centre of that walking street. I would detour into Cicek Pasaji (the Flower Passage), a shortcut through to the Fish Bazaar, enjoying the architecture inside, smiling but leaving behind the waiters who beckon and invite me to eat. At this point, it is always too soon to stop for food.

Once in the Fish Bazaar, I would turn left and head for the scarf shop, the one where I used to sit chatting with a Turkish guy, listening to his stories of how life was for him in that massive ancient post-modern city.

Later I would pop back out onto Istiklal and walk on until I reached Robinson Crusoe - my beloved Istanbul bookshop. I would linger awhile ... walking out, after an hour perhaps, with just one book I couldn’t resist. Then I would pass by the Pasabahce store across the street, not wanting to carry their beautiful Turkish glassware as I wandered.

At the end of Istiklal Caddesi, there is always the decision … should I follow the winding road down the hill or catch the world's oldest underground cable car at Tunel. Almost always I would opt for the walk, passing the Mevlevi Monastery where the dervishes whirl and mesmorize me whenever I watch them. And on down the hill, past the small music shops... past the blue window, and then unable to stop myself, I’d take a right turn and head for Galata Tower ... just one more time.

Paying my entry fee, I would step into the lift then travel on up the stairs to the 360 degree balcony. There ...there is the best view out over this city that I came to love. This girl from small town New Zealand looking out over the ancient beautiful city ... who could have dreamed it?

With the city behind me, to the left I would see the massive bridge that links the continents of Europe and Asia. Straight ahead - the ancient Topkapi Palace where, for 400 years, the Ottoman sultans ruled their empire - built 1465. There would be Haghia Sophia (Aya Sofya), one of the world’s greatest architectural achievements, built about 1,400 years ago, and I would wish I was already wandering inside her walls.

I would look out over the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus and the Marmara Sea ... all mysterious names that meant nothing until I lived there and then, walking on round the tower balcony, I could look down at the Italian architecture of the area or further, or over to Levent and its post-modern skyscrapers ... so happy to be back in this city that I love.

Back on the street, the tower behind me, I would walk on down the hill until I reached Galata Bridge. I can never resist a looking into the fishermens buckets, filled with water and fish, happy to be in amongst the noise of the city ... the simit salesmen, the bait and water salesmen shouting their sales cries all round me.

I would reach Eminonu and descend down into the Pazaar, (market) wander a while in the place where the smell of fish cooking is the air. I would pass by the doner seller, watch people arranging themselves on the old ferry bound for Kadikoy and walk on, through the tunnel, to the Egyptian Bazaar. The Spice Bazaar too.

I would wander awhile, exploring the cheese and olive selections outside, always unable to resist visiting the stalls where the leeches are sold, watching the birdseed sellers, the people ... always the people.

But still there would be more. On up the hill into Sultanahmet, the place where some more of my favourite places are found ...Haghia Sophia is there, Yerebatan Sarayi (the Underground Cistern)- place of incredible beauty, and the Blue Mosque.

In need of some cay, I would walk back along the road to Cemberlitas and my favourite cafe. The waiter and I would catch up on each others news. He might ask me about the friend I brought last time, and I would ask about how busy they were and if the tourist season had been kind.

A potato gozleme and two cay before moving on ... wanting to spend a little time in the halls of the Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsi) finding new scarves ... always the scarves but enjoying the banter with salesmen in this ancient labyrinth of 4,000 shops.

Once, I met a man from Afghanistan there. He had just finished his first year of training to be a doctor when the Taliban forced him and his family to flee. They moved through many countries until they made their home Istanbul. They were fluent in at least 7 languages.

He was a nice guy, with a store like an Aladdin’s cave, full things that I can’t begin to describe ... a surprise tucked down a small corridor that I have trouble finding each time I return. And perhaps that would be enough, although I would surely stop to say hi to Hayden - the Yeni Zelanda who arrived and stayed ... an Istanbul travel agent now.

Backpackers and travelers would come and go while we talked, booking their trips and so, I would head up to the rooftop bar ... drinking a cold Efes beer as I watched the ships queuing for entry out on the Marmara Sea. Then hearing the call to prayer go out of over the city, I would realise it was time to go home.

Going home was always much simpler ... the metro from Sultanahment to Karakoy, a short walk up to the underground cable car at Tunel, where I could sit as the cable pulled the passengers uphill on one of the oldest cable cars in the world.

I would stroll back along Istiklal Caddesi, amongst all the Turks who are just arriving as this yabanci heads home, going down into the underground Metro in Taksim Square, two stops to Mecidiyekoy ... and then up into the craziness of shoeshine men and flower-sellers, traffic and smog.

I would cut across the main road, under the highway overpass, then wend my way down into the place where I lived ... that little village-like suburb in the middle of Istanbul.

That is, if I had been in Istanbul today ...

The image below, garlic hanging on an Istanbul wall.