. The Wedding of Hassan Fattah Part Five: Cruising…

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The Wedding of Hassan Fattah
Part Five: Cruising the Bazaar and the Bosphorus

In which we cakewalk through the Kapali Çarsi, make it to the Swissotel in plenty of time, meet a Spanish soap opera star, and chat-up the niece of a man who looks like Picasso’s Stravinsky.
(catch up quick with parts 1-4)

The Kapali Çarsi, or covered market, is a small town of sorts with thousands of shops, a dozen or more restaurants, a police station and mosques, and an insufficient number of rest rooms. At the heart of it is the Jewelers’ Bedesten made up of 15 domed halls supported by eight fat pillars called elephants’ feet. Construction got under way in 1453, shortly after the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. It is to the Willowbrook Mall what Stegosaurus is to a drugstore chameleon.
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I found out how to haggle by accident.

After going several rounds with a seller of cashmere scarves in the usual fashion, I finally rejected what I was convinced was the man’s lowest offer–$40. He gave me that price scornfully, claiming he would make little profit. I believed him, and I walked away. But I didn’t get very far. The man left his stall and followed me down the merchandise-banked alleys a short distance. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, “$25.”

Well, I had thought back at the stall that $40 was a reasonably low price for a very high quality scarf (the seller said it was 110% cashmere). In fact, I made some mental notes of my surroundings so that I might be able to come back after thinking about it. I came close, in fact, to just paying the $40. I would probably have prided myself on striking a tough deal. Little did I know I wasn’t even in the game yet.

I bought a black scarf for $25 for my wife. I ended up giving it to my mother.

I used this walk-away technique again and again that morning. I bought my 12-year-old a small acoustic guitar, my 5-year-old a pink belly dancer outfit (complete with a hat and a cowhide tambourine), my 15-year-old a purse, my wife jewelry, and myself a blue hookah. I couldn’t find a fez big enough, which is just as well.

In addition to learning how to haggle, I also came to realize that once you walk away from a stall in the covered market, you must abandon all hope of finding that same stall again. The bazaar is like the Hare Krishna part of a 1970’s head shop seen through a kaleidoscope. While you are in it, you are de facto lost. And it’s a great feeling, as long as you have nowhere to be, which pretty much describes my daytime itinerary the whole time I was in Istanbul.

I was heavily loaded when I finally made my way to an exit. I had no idea which direction I was facing as I sat outside a teahouse along a small square across from the an ancient gate to the bazaar. I did a sketch at that teahouse, and a large painting from that sketch last year when Maureen took the girls to St. Louis for several days. During the weekend they were away, I painted that picture pretty much fulltime, suffused with the feeling of sitting in that square, drinking tea and sketching on that morning in Istanbul in July, 2004. During one break from painting, I remember dancing to Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo A la Turk, drinking a beer in my bathrobe rather near the picture window in the living room in the middle of the afternoon. This, for me, is the essence of suburban living.

I arrived at the Swissotel a little early for the wedding ceremony that afternoon—I had followed instructions that were slipped under my hotel room door while I was at the bazaar, but the time on the directions was wrong, or the ceremony was delayed. I don’t remember which. At any rate, I had an hour, so I did a few sketches, one of the lobby, and one of the river from the rooftop garden restaurant. I’ve yet to do paintings from either of these.

I’d found out the day before, that Hassan and Layla had been legally married in London some weeks before in a private ceremony~a little more Fattah intrigue. The Istanbul ceremony was to be the big family event. I must say that I wasn’t sure of what to expect at a Muslim wedding ceremony. Once it got underway, I found it simple and very beautiful. Hassan and Layla sat in the place of honor at a table on which were a Koran and two or three bowls. Layla wore a western style wedding dress and veil. Hassan wore a dark suit and blue tie (I’m going with a red tie in the painting). Seated on either side were their fathers, Hassan’s uncle, and the Imam, who performed the ceremony in Turkish, a language hardly anyone in the room understood. Someone interpreted in English. It was quite formal with a lot of prayer sung by the Imam, who, though quite young, was every bit as stern as an old school Irish Catholic priest. Still, two of Hassan’s nieces were allowed to flit around Layla most of the time, which provided a delightful counterpoint to the solemnity. Layla was radiant, Hassan stock still—a first for him to my knowledge. He radiated in his own way as well.

At one point, two women stretched a white sheet over Hassan and Layla’s heads and a third rubbed two big white cylinders together over the sheet. These cylinders were hunks of salt that sprinkled down a good luck blessing. I stood in the back and worked on a small pencil sketch. By the time I was done with a sketch showing the salt blessing, the ceremony was over

Afterward, we got onto buses that took us to our dinner cruise. I sat next to a very interesting woman, an actress who lives in Spain and plays a part on a Spanish soap opera. Her father is German, her mother Spanish. She had noticed me sketching. We chatted about her acting and my painting, and I asked her about Spain—my first trip there would be the following year. She is a friend of Layla’s who worked with her in London at some point, as I remember.

The boat set sail at twilight on a beautiful, clear blue evening. On the top deck was a bar and dance floor with a DJ–we danced to Iraqi folk music, which is very big on drums. To me it sounded generally like Arab folk music, but Hassan straightened me out. It was unmistakably Iraqi, he said—“It’s all about the rhythm, Rikki!” Indeed. Flailing arms clapped as the dancers circled Hassan and Layla. Ululations rose in wedding celebration: Loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo!

We went below decks for a delicious dinner. I can’t, however, vouch for dessert, the two principle components of which were chicken and cheese. Strike two for dessert in Istanbul after the previous night’s ice cream, much of which was chipped off the Istiklal pavement this morning. This time, I didn’t even taste the dessert.

Earlier in the evening, I spoke at the bar with a delightful young woman in her twenties, very thin with black hair, who smoked cigarettes and dotingly attended to Hassan’s uncle, a very old man who is the splitting image of Igor Stravinsky. She was incredibly friendly and genuine as we chatted about him. Her love for this man, also her uncle, was very touching. At dinner, I sat with a friend of Layla’s family who had long since left Baghdad. He and his family had lived there long enough, however, to know what life under Saddam was all about. He reminded me of the one part of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11 that really pissed me off, the part in which Moore made that monster seem like an inconsequential bumpkin who happened to be in charge—like a lovable avuncular Khrushchev dancing to the folk drums with a cigar and a silly hat. Moore’s films tend to be riddled with this kind of manipulative stuff, all of it calling into question his intent. Life was simply Hell under Saddam.

I also met Layla’s father briefly. He is a famous writer.

After dinner we danced again. At one point the boat passed under a big suspension bridge, called, I believe, the Faith Bridge. I remembered seeing it in the background in TV coverage of George Bush speaking at some international meeting in Istanbul a few weeks before the wedding. All along the route were ornate mosques, monuments, a castle, and modern buildings on one side, and smaller buildings, piled pueblo style with red roofs in some places, on the other side. That other side was Asia (and most of Turkey). To this day, I’ve yet to set foot in Asia.

The dinner cruise was fantastic. Hassan beamed, as did Layla. The weather was perfect, and the company was brilliant: A Spanish soap opera star. Stravinsky and Bacall look-alikes. Omar, bald and swinging the ladies. Busses took us back to the Swissotel and from there I took a cab back to Taksim–but not until I got conflicting information from Ali and Mohammad about where to go for the reception the next night. I went to bed exhausted, with the Iraqi folk drums beating pleasantly inside me as I fell–(I distinctly remember smiling)–asleep.

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Next Week:

Interview with
a master of the
wood lathe

We’re accosted
by some of
the local kids.

The wedding
reception we’ve
all been
waiting for .

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Meanwhile, down in the basement:

We’ll need some
background on
these people.

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Photos and art
Steg-O Lee: On elephants’ feet*
Aerial view: Istanbul’s covered market
Spice rack: Head shop kaleidoscope
Gate at the Bazaar: From an on-sight sketch
Up on the roof: View of the Bosphorus
Dinner cruise: Iraqi beats
Avuncular: Picasso’s sketch of Stravinsky
Suspense: Bridge over the Bosphorus
European side: Rumeli Hisari castle
Kids around the block: Next week**

*Photo by Jim Puckett
**Photo by Dick Osseman