The Strait at Istanbul

At the Grand Bazaar, row after row of shops form an endless virtual maze for shopping tourists. Istanbul itself has come through a maze of several thousand years of history. Once part of the Greek world, then a center of Christendom, today it is a hub of Islam. This history has created a mesmerizing multi-layered image. A thousand shades of cruelty and glory, a thousand faces of love and anguish—the thoughts and ideas of countless lives permeate every corner of the city like an exotic scent. A diverse array of people walk the streets: Arabs and Greeks, East Asians, Russians, Eastern Europeans; people with hair as dark as ebony, as red as a sunset, as blond as strands of pure gold. This city is the world.

What is race? Harvard professor Nur Yalman, himself a native of Turkey, has said that racial conflict is not a problem between races, but a problem between those in power. The powerful tend to fan the flames of enmity toward other races in order to garner support for themselves and their aims. Where is the current of history headed?

Beneath the surface waters of the Bosphorus, there flows a deeper current. The water on the surface flows southward from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara at about two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half miles per hour. Beneath this, however, from about 130 feet down, flows a gentler current in the exact opposite direction.

Amid the tumult of the century’s end, the groundwork for a global human family may not yet be complete. Anxiety about the new era has given rise to a tendency to revert to and take refuge in that old tribal consciousness known as nationalism. A dangerous movement in that direction can also be perceived in Japan. Yet beneath this current of the times there flows a gentler, opposing current.

On the evening of the day we arrived, we were invited to attend the Istanbul International Art Festival. Gracing the opening of the event was a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with its rousing chorus, “Be embraced, ye millions!” How appropriate a song for this city! Afterward, we went outside to watch a commemorative fireworks display. Magnificent roses continued to burgeon and burst forth repeatedly across the night sky of Istanbul.