NEIGHBORHOOD DAY – 28 August 2009
Today was our day to do the neighborhood project. We went with Dr. Mallery to Nisantasi, a wealthy part of Istanbul. We had to take a tram, then a Funiculer, then the Metro to get to it from Sultanahmet. On the way there, we also happened to lose our purple folder with instructions for what to do today. So it was a great start! We had no idea what to do. So Dr. Mallery briefed us on what to do when we got there and showed us around a little bit so we can get a rough picture of the area. Good thing we still had the map.
After arriving at Nisantasi, we stopped to get a cup of coffee at the Starbucks at City’s, a high-end neighborhood mall. After a cup of coffee, we started on our assignment right away. We talked to different people, inside and outside City’s. Inside, we talked to 2 ladies selling stuff toys. One was a student working in her summer vacation and the other one was the regular employee looking over this particular store. Their company was located by the Grand Bazaar. She told us that a lot of people here spoke English because it was where the rich Turks lived and where the rich tourists shopped. The majority of the workers of this mall did not live in Nisantasi but commuted from adjacent neighborhoods.
Outside the mall, we talked to a couple of musicians who played outside the stores on the street. One played a tenor saxophone and the other one trumpet. They were part of a band. They said that they were from the Asian side of Istanbul and they commute here two or three days a week to play. After talking to them they played some jazz for us.
From our observations, there were a lot of businessmen on the streets and a lot of people on their phones. It seemed a lot busier and more money-oriented. People don’t sit around in front of their stores just relaxing or talking to a friend. We also noticed that very few women here wore headscarves. Nasantasi was basically a fancy shopping neighborhood. Where the brand name shops stopped, that was the borders of Nisantasi. We found that out after asking a dozen people everywhere we went. When the person did not speak English, we would try to use body language to help. When the person we approach did not speak English, we would point to the ground and say “Nisantasi?” If we got an affirmative answer, we would continue by pointing up or down the street saying “Nisantasi?” It was quite successful to find out the borders of neighborhood. However, people were less likely to converse with us extensively because they were on their way to some place or busy doing something. The people who seemed not too busy did not speak much English.
As we continued looking for people to talk to, we walked by a mosque during its Friday afternoon service. There were several things that we found strange. First, they all sat outdoors on mats facing the Imam and Mecca. All the other mosques we visited the prayer services were inside. Another thing that struck us as odd was that, all the visible worshippers were male. That made sense; women don’t prayer in the same area as men. But when the service ended and the worshippers filed out of the gates, we couldn’t spot any women. Our final observation was that all the worshippers coming from the mosque were walking away from Nisantasi.
We stopped for lunch at a Chicago Pizza place (the neighborhood did not have Turkish food, only international food). Here, we got to talk to the owners of the restaurant. The wife of the owner spoke sufficient English to communicate with us. She grew up in Nisantasi. Later in life she moved to another town to live there for 10 years. Then she moved back to Nasantasi with her husband and they've been living here for 15 years. She said that she liked Nisantasi because of the shopping. It seemed to us that this family was pretty well off because they own another house in the outskirts of Istanbul. They go that house for vacation and such.
After lunch we walked around a little more, we ended up in a park on the Nisantasi border. In the park was a semi-circle of busts of past sultans and of course Ataturk. Facing the semi-circle was a 25 foot statue of Ataturk. There were a couple of old guys just hanging out, there were a few mothers with their children, an older woman feeding birds. It was a pretty peaceful place on the border of one of the city’s busier districts.
As we walked back towards the metro we thought about how it seemed like we had stepped out of the Turkey we’d experienced over the past few days and stepped into 5th Ave. in New York. The honking of taxis, the businessmen on their phones, and fast paced, goal oriented people were such a contrast from the friendly shop owners offering us “good prices” and the stray cats longing to be petted we experienced in Sultanahmet.
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