New York to Istanbul Chapter 7 - Touring Fatih

Chapter 7: Walking through Fatih

We stopped for breakfast at a baker, where Stephanie bargained for the freshest bread I had ever had, a loaf straight from the oven.  Passing a bakery still buzzing with the mid-morning energy of replenishing its shelves, Stephanie ducked in the front door and, with pointing and an ever increasing Turkish vocabulary, obtained a loaf so fresh it burnt our fingers as we tore open its golden crust.

Fatih is a district of Istanbul not exactly boldfaced on the tourist maps.  Named, like so much in the city, after Sultan Mehmet II ("Fatih" means "conqureror"), it is a large borough comprising most of the old city of Constantinople.  A fact which was reinforced as Stephanie, Rachel, Elle and I stepped into its narrow streets through the very gate that Ottoman warriors burst down on that fateful day in 1453 (a Tuesday, if the small metal plaque next to it can be trusted).

The mostly secular Turks we had been hanging out with had told us that Fatih was safe, of course, but "conservative."  The borough is large enough to defy generalizations, but as we walked through the central neighborhoods, I couldn't help but compare it to cutting through a Hasidic enclave in New York with Chester and Sid earlier in the summer.

As we devoured our impromptu breakfast, small groups of fully veiled women glided over the cobblestones, shepherding schoolchildren wearing uniforms copied from British public schools.  Rachel laughed and pointed out the skull capped and bearded men sitting outside their carpet shops eyeing me, the lone young man leading a harem of women through the alleys, with a look of astonishment and jocular admiration.

But we didn't have time for reflections of class, gender and religion.  We had to find a church.

The scene of a desperate last stand by doomed Byzantine defenders, St. Mary of the Mongols would have been easier to find if we'd known its Turkish name, "Kanlı Kilise," or "The Bloody Church."  Its colorful popular name comes not from a saint, but a Byzantine princess, Maria Palaiologina, who married the Mongol ruler of Persia, and then returned to run the monastery at this church after being widowed.

The young caretaker opened the gate and waited by the door as we stepped into a gilded alternative world.  Despite the capriciousness of subsequent Sultans, this Orthodox church is protected by fiat of Mehmet the Conqueror himself and has been a continuously Christian place of worship since its founding.  A fact that the young man took obvious pride in as he stepped in to show us the cellar where the sacramental wine was kept.

Walking down to the shores of the Golden Horn, we came to Eminönü, a neighborhood that is on and off again part of Fatih.  After a brief stop at Fener to see the disappointingly, but understandably modern and beaurocratic headquarters of the Patriarch of Constantinople, we caught sight of another of Istanbul's famous churches, St. Stephen Bulgarian Orthodox Chruch, better known as the Cast Iron Church.

Prior to the nineteenth century, the Bulgarians had been part of the Greek Orthodox community.  Due to nationalistic movements they were granted their own clerical hierarchy, which required a new church.  After an original burned down, the Bulgarian Orthodox community of Istanbul decided to go big or go home.  Metal pre-fabricated buildings were high technology at the time, Eifel was building his tower and the British were shipping cast iron churches to Australia.  St. Stephen was built in Austria and shipped, all 500 tons of it, down the Danube, through the Black Sea and into the Bosphorous.  Mercifully for the workers who assembled the prefabricated parts, it's located close to the shore.

The church was getting ready for a wedding when we showed up, but once again Stephanie's negotiations, this time in Bulgarian, carried the day and the old church lady let us in to light a few candles. 

The most remarkable feature of the church is that it really is made entirely of iron.  Tapping a seemingly marble pillar elicits not the expected thump, but a surprising clang and a reproachful look from the church lady who expects you to be praying.

Stephanie looked a little uncomfortable, being a child of the Soviet Union after all.  I was surprised to see that Elle, too, was a little anxious to leave.  Even I had to admit that iron churches rest heavy on one's shoulders.  Once we left, the air was clearer and we saw dozens of Turkish families picnicking on the grass by the water, boiling pots of tea and grilling kabobs.

"A wedding, today," Stephanie thought out loud. "There can't be many of those any more,"