Cat in Doorway
Istanbul, 2008
I’ve read that there are thousands and maybe millions of cats roaming Istanbul. I didn’t notice them on my walks, but later, when I returned home and looked at my photos, I often spied a cat, sometimes in full view, sometimes streaking across, sometimes perched in safety in an obscure spot. I was glad to see this spark of life added to my images. This mother cat didn’t bother to hide as she guarded the doorway to the Buyuk Valide Han or hostel.
I try to walk by this han when I visit Istanbul. It’s a way of remembering my first visit to the Valide Han. Then the han was being used as a textile factory. I had climbed the ancient stone steps to the upper floors…it was here that the wealthy travelers took rooms during the days of the silk road… and I heard the mechanical clattering of looms echoing down the stone corridors. I peered into an open door and saw a weaver working alone, tending an old machine that barely fit into the small stone-walled room. The only light was a bare lightbulb hanging overhead but it was enough to highlight the sheen of multicolored silk that spilled from the old loom. It seemed magical to me… the color of the silk, the deafening sound, the black, gleaming metal of the moving machine…I felt I’d gone back in time.
The hans were set a day’s journey apart on the silk road throughout the middle east and central Asia. They meant shelter and safety for caravans and travelers. Read Isabella Bird’s accounts of traveling in Persia and Kurdistan: of riding a mule over mountain passes deep in snow then arriving at a han where she wrote in her journal before falling asleep on a pile of straw. If you have a Kindle, you can get all of her journeys for less than two dollars: “The Essential Isabella Bird Collection”.