Seafish waters

In Istanbul so much of life is centered around the water. I arrived in the city in early morning after an all night train from Ankara and the first thing I felt was the difference in air, the comparative humidity. Moisture and saltiness rising from the sea and sticking to skin and hair.... though perhaps the difference is just in relation to the dryness of Ankara. Ankara is high on the Central Anatolian Plateau with dry dusted air, far from a river and approximately 3000 feet higher elevation than Istanbul. Left outside, bread and simit in Ankara merely become stale overnight; here they form an interesting combination of mold and dried sea air. And the presence of water here attracts birds of all varieties; Ankara is limited only to those which can survive on concrete and scattered sesame seeds.

Here the water is in all directions... from one hill I can see the Golden Horn in the north, the estuary that divides the European side of Istanbul in two. The Golden Horn flows into the Bosphorus to the east, the famous strait that divides Europe from Asia, which itself flows into the Sea of Marmara to the south. And at the same time aware of the Black Sea farther north and the Aegean in the south, this city becomes an island.

The closest bridge to me is the Galata, named for the 700-year-old tower on the hill just north of the Golden Horn. Beneath the bridge is a line of high priced restaurants and nargile cafes, where one pays for the view of fishing boats, cruises, trading barges, and ferries that pass by.
From early morning till night the top is lined with dedicated fishermen (and one lone woman) casting their lines a distance of two storeys to the water below.

Two friends and I wanted to join this group of ragged, smelly old-timers who spend every day watching the water. We bought a fishing pole and walked to the middle of the bridge one early morning; an old man watched us cluelessly trying to figure out the line and hooks, took pity, and showed us how it's done. Then with one graceful arch he cast the line, fastened our pole to the guard rail, and offered us hot tea while we waited. During the next hour our line never twitched; he, however, caught five small bluefish and one needlefish, each time letting us reel in his line and unhook the fish.

Our teacher, Orhan Bey, told us about the deniz annesi (sea mother), thousands of translucent jellyfish that flow silently by. "They won't burn your hands, but if they touch your eyes you'll go blind." He told us the best time of day to catch fish is before 7am, after 8pm, or any time when the wind is whipping up waves enough to bring the fish near the surface. And November is the best time of year, when fish migrate through the Bosphorus in crowds of millions.
"I catch my fish from this bridge, I sell my fish here, I drink my tea here, and I sleep here at night," he said. And it's true...he had a reclining padded chair and an endless box of makeshift fishing replacement parts. Just enough.

And when we had to leave for classes, he gave us a doubled plastic bag with his morning catch. "For your dinner, ya? Olive oil and onions, a fresh lemon, parsley and salt." That evening we fried our fish and ate outside in the fig tree garden. Three Istanbul cats joined us for the fish bones.

~~~alice

Next are wonderings about pollution in the Bosphorus... how bad is it? what is the government doing to clean it up? and should I really be eating this much fish?