Hey! Hey! Hey! –Istanbul and the Celebration of Bayran

By Tom

Bahrain, Eastern Arabian Peninsula

There can’t be anywhere in the world more fun than the meyhanes of Istanbul on a Saturday night during Eid, the celebration of Bayran at the end of Ramadan.  The meyhanes are restaurants throughout Istanbul where large extended families eat and drink long into the night while a traditional folk band goes around the room playing boisterous music.  The bands consist of an oud, (a stringed instrument similar to a guitar), a fiddle, a clarinet, a tambourine and drums, which are all connected to microphones to amplify the music throughout the restaurant.  The songs are traditional Turkish and Middle Eastern folk songs (think Hava Nagila – and yes, they played that one too).   The people in the room range in age from teenagers to grandparents.  Everyone in the room knows the words to the songs and sings along like a bunch of drunken college kids listening to Living On a Prayer by Bon Jovi.  People clap and sing and dance between (or sometimes on) the tables to song after song after song.  The energy is infectious, and seems to be bottomless as Julia and I joined long after the celebration had started and it didn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon by the time we slipped out well after midnight.  The tambourinist goes from one man to the next keeping the beat directly into the guy’s ear until the man laughs and good-naturedly hands over 10 lira to get the tambourine to move on. 

The Aya Sophia mosque in Istanbul

We found the meyhan a short walk from our hostel in a district of Istanbul with a lively collection of al fresco restaurants and bars.   When we first passed, we thought we had the wrong place because the tables on the street level were practically empty.  Later in the night we passed it again and heard the music spilling out of the third floor window so we decided to investigate.  By the time we made it to the third floor and opened the door to a wall of clapping and dancing people, we knew we were in the right place. 

The moon rises across the Bosporus above the Asian side of Istanbul

One of the things about this trip that I’ve been most exciting about is seeing live performances of traditional music.  After seeing the folk bands in a meyhane, I feel like there was no better way to have experienced traditional music of Turkey, and also to have been a part of a Turkish celebration.  We were unable to attend a wedding in Turkey because there were no weddings while we were here due to Ramadan.   We were also unable to run any whitewater because the best rivers are in far eastern Turkey along the border with Iraq and Iran.  While I've heard there are quite a few Americans abroad in Iraq these days, I doubt that many are there for the rafting.  Therefore, the weddings and whitewater project –to experience different cultures first hand and to adventure in far-off lands– was more figurative than literal in Turkey. I suppose that the hiking and mountain-biking we did back in Cappadocia fulfilled the whitewater portion, and experiencing a meyhane filled with celebrating friends and families felt a lot like a wedding reception.

 Turkish lamps hanging from a Grand Bazaar market stall

One of the Seven Hills of Istanbul

To fill you in since our last blog post, on Thursday we left the North Aegean island of Bozcaada and traveled by bus around the Sea of Marmara back to Istanbul.  On Friday we toured the ancient mosques of the Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque.  We also went into the Grand Bazaar district to the carpet shops, jewelry stores and tea houses, although the bazaar itself was closed for the holiday.  On Saturday we took a ferry up the Bosporus from Istanbul on the Sea of Marmara to the northern terminus on the Black Sea.  The city of Istanbul seems to span for miles and miles up the Bosporus, with ancient palaces and modern mansions lining its shores, before the steep hillsides along the northern end finally give way to smaller fishing villages.  In contrast to the sprawling city at its southern entrance, the northern entrance to the Bosporus has only one small lighthouse on the western point and no development on the eastern shore. 

A woman in a burka walks with her daughter under the flag of Turkey

 The sun setting behind the Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Ferries and ships head up the Bosporus to the Black Sea, under the bridge that connects Europe and Asia

Istanbul, much like the rest of Turkey, is a place caught between two worlds.  While most of Turkey’s smaller cities consist of row after endless row of exactly identical cement low-rise apartment buildings, every building in Istanbul looks different than the one next to it.  The ancient palaces, mosques, harems, and winding cobbled streets fade into modern skyscrapers as one travels north in the city.  You are just as likely to sit on the bus next to a woman in the full, black, Muslim cover (the burka) as you are to sit next to one sporting a skirt and a tank-top.  It is a city struggling to create a modern identity as the government of Turkey struggles to maintain a secular state in a largely Muslim country, in a region of the world where Islamic rule dominates most governments.  The University in Istanbul bans women from wearing head scarves on campus. A current referendum being voted on by the people of Turkey will decide if the elected government can appoint federal judges or if they will continue to be appointed from within.  While this change is necessary for full admission to the European Union, most believe that the government will appoint judges that are more sympathetic to Muslim causes and thus swing the currently secular branch of government towards more pro-religious rulings.  As one ex-pat put it, Turkey is constantly swinging back and forth between which border it will be most influenced by; Iran and the Middle East or Western Europe. 

 The ornate chandeliers and lavish interior of the Aya Sophia mosque in Istanbul

The Blue Mosque at night, lit up with a special holiday message

However, as we danced and clapped and shouted Hey! Hey! Hey! to the music on Saturday night, it seemed as though the mixture of influences, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and European, can sometimes come together quite nicely.

Unlike Central America, with its stray dogs, Turkey is covered with stray cats.  My Aunt Mo shouldn't visit Istanbul; she would adopt them all!