Back in Old Constantinople

"Culture is clearly still very important to Russians," says Kamil Sukun, a mover and shaker in the fashion world of Istanbul. "In fact, all the people from the old Eastern bloc whom I see in Istanbul are extremely cultivated. When I hire models, the Romanians are always reading philosophy, while the Russians take time out by playing Tchaikovsky on the piano."


In old Constantinople, where East and West have always collided, the Russians are back, to confront American tourists, the hucksters of the Grand Bazaar and resident Moslem fundamentalists. The Anglican vicar at the Crimean Memorial church in Beyogulu tells me that Russian pilgrims are today arriving in droves, travelling to Jerusalem to Mount Sinai to Mount Athos and back to Istanbul again.


Meanwhile, the city's garment district of Laleli has become home to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Russian entrepreneurs. Many of the shop and factory signs are in Russian; and the piano bar at the Hotel Zurich is a warm fug of vodka and Marlboro smoke just like any Moscow dive.


Russians are in line for the ferry to the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara; they're there, watching the belly-dancers, in the restaurant at the top of the medieval Galata Tower. And in the Kariye Mosque they're there again, waiting patiently for the English speaking guide to be followed by an urgent blonde speaking in the most refined of St. Petersburg accents.


It seems only right, I suppose: The world has been made one again in this most cosmopolitan of all cities, the meeting-place of East and West. Moscow inherited the leadership of the church of Byzantium after its capture by the Ottomans; and Russia has always been a major player here. A hundred thousand Russians, for example, gravitated to Istanbul after the Revolution. I soon find myself following their footsteps into the old international district of Pera.


How can I not? At the Pera Palas Hotel -- built for passengers arriving from the Orient Express -- the sign on my room states that it is the Leon Trotsky room. (There are signs for other past guests: Greta Garbo, Agatha Christie, Mata Hari and Ernest Hemingway -- though Kim Philby, the British spy who also stayed here, fails to get the nod.)


Downstairs, in the lobby is where an Azerbaijani minister was assassinated in the 1920s. And the next-door bar is what saved the British ambassador to Romania from a similar fate in 1941. Arriving with his entourage from the Orient Express, Ambassador Randall announced he was dying for a whisky. Outside, in the lobby while he was drinking, six people were killed and 19 were wounded by a bomb left among his luggage.


Up above the Pera Palace, on the slopes of Beyogulu, is where the post-Revolution Russian immigrants congregated: ballerinas, painters and poets, as well as hustlers of every kind claiming royal connection. There were Russian flower girls in the Flower Market and any number of Russian restaurants where, in the words of Paul Morand, "le tout-Moscou, absurdly capped in fezzes, wandered among the palm trees."


The most famous Russian meeting-place, though, was a place called Rejans -- named for the Regence in Paris -- where the waiters were grand dukes and the pianist was the Baroness Valentine von Klodt Jurgnezkburg. A balalaika orchestra played in the gallery; below it dined women in plunging d?collet?s, intellectuals, artists -- and plenty of spies.


For Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, ate at Rejans, cheek by jowl with the British, German and French ambassadors -- as well with every resident Russian who is even vaguely remembered today: Lydia Arzumanova, for example, who founded the very first ballet school in Turkey; and a mysterious woman called Natasha, who is remembered, from portraits, both for her extraordinary beauty and her ethereal vagueness. So lost was she in a dream of old Russia that she seems not to have known her own surroundings.


Most of the old Russian quartiers are gone now, though, sad to say. The Flower Market collapsed in 1978, and its flowers have moved to another market. Even Rejans is today a sad shadow of itself. It was damaged by fire in 1975; and the evening I went it was empty, except for a laconic grande dame and unreadable Turkish waiters. The piroshki I ate were the worst I'd ever had, as if they had evolved into another species after a long and weary time away from home.


As I took a roundabout way back to the hotel, the only sign of Russia I could see was in the hookers near the hotel-center of Taksim. Tall, high-cheekboned and almost astonishingly white, they seemed to be doing a roaring trade.