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Istanbul's Galata Bridge has spanned the Golden Horn since the sixth century AD, connecting the old city with the more Western districts to the north. But the bridge is a city in itself, peopled by merchants and petty thieves, tourists and fishermen, and at the same time a microcosmic reflection of Turkey as the link between Asia and Europe.
Geert Mak introduces us to the woman who sells lottery tickets, the cigarette vendors and the best pickpockets in Europe. He tells us about the pride of the cobbler and the tea-seller's homesickness. And he describes the role of honour in Turkish culture, the temptations of fundamentalism and violence, and the urge to survive, even in the face of despair.
These stories of the bridge's denizens are interwoven with vignettes illuminating moments in the history of Istanbul and Turkey and shedding light on Turkey's relationship with Europe and the West, the Armenian question, the migration from the Turkish countryside to the city and the demise of the Ottoman Empire.
The Bridge is a charming, learned and unique gem of a book by the author of the international bestseller In Europe.
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I would highly recommend this book to anyone planning on visiting Istanbul in the near or intermediate future (although by no means is it a travel guide). For someone simply interested in contemporary Istanbul or Turkey, THE BRIDGE probably should be rewarding but I rather doubt that it is the single best book. As a history, the book is instructive but hardly comprehensive. The strength of the book is the anecdotal evidence it provides of life among the hoi polloi of Istanbul - here, the peddlars of books, cigarettes, umbrellas, perfume, and insoles - and their views on the contemporary conflicts between West and East (or Middle East), and between the secular Christian world and what in Istanbul at least appears to be a rather secular Muslim world. Of the vendors with whom Mak visited, only one might be characterized as a fundamentalist, but for all, Islam was "above all a feeling that binds them in their complicated relationship with the affluent West." "Anyone who mocks their god * * * is not insulting an institution or even a religious feeling; no, he is dealing a blow to their deepest sense of personal worth, the last bastion against total humiliation."
In providing such anecdotal evidence, in a readable and literate fashion, the book serves as a building block of a bridge to understanding.
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