To The City: Life and Death Along The Ancient Walls of Istanbul (Book Review)
Alexander Christie-Miller's new book is a page-turner that recounts the deep history of Istanbul's old city walls while telling the stories of a diverse bunch of characters who live adjacent to them.
I’ve always been fascinated with Istanbul’s 1500 year-old city walls. Arguably the most important defensive structure in history, they protected The City from numerous attacking empires for a millennium. It was only after a protracted battle that Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conquerer captured Constantinople by storming through its walls, and the Ottomans were only able to do this because they were in possession of cannonball fire, a novel technology at the time that the beleaguered Byzantines were unable to purchase from the Hungarians who invented it. Still, penetrating the vast, multi-layered walls was no small feat for the Ottomans, and it took several grueling campaigns of pummeling the walls with massive cannonballs until Mehmet and his army triumphantly stormed through the city on May 29, 1453.
Having spent considerable time on and around the walls over the years, with a particular interest in the bostans (historic urban gardens) that lay alongside them, I was excited several years back to hear that Alexander Christie-Miller was writing a book on this very topic. Christie-Miller started reporting from Istanbul in 2010 and quickly developed a reputation for his sharp journalism and luscious, evocative prose.
To The City: Life and Death Along The Ancient Walls of Istanbul is slated to be published by William Collins Books in February in the UK, with a US edition also in the works. I didn’t want to wait for its release, and Christie-Miller was kind enough to send me a digital copy, which I devoured on my Kindle, another reminder that e-readers might not be the devil after all.
“I came to see the walls as a symbol of resistance to all these forces of upheaval, they seemed less an architectural feature of a city than a geological one that time has yet to erode, protruding from the past like an outcrop of rock anchoring an eroding headland, the remnants of an older world clinging in their lee,” writes Christie-Miller in the final sentence of the first chapter. To those who have pressed their hands against the stretches of ancient walls that have been standing in place for a millennium and a half, the above description won’t come off as hyperbolic. Indeed, the walls evoke an enormous if somber presence, imposing monuments of stone and brick that have witnessed and withstood unimaginable violence and destruction and outlasted it all.
Christie-Miller’s recounting of late-Byzantine and early-Ottoman history is sharp and engaging, making this book relevant for history buffs even if they don’t have much of an interest in Turkey. The author takes us through the primary events of what has been an extremely tumultuous decade. The walls and the people living in quarters within close proximity to them are linked to these events and themes, which include the 2013 Gezi Park protests, a surge in controversial mega-projects and rapid gentrification of poor neighborhoods, the failed military coup of July 15, 2016 and the ensuing crackdown, and the way in which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has navigated it all to maintain power. Sometimes after a half-dozen pages or so, one forgets they are reading a book about the walls, and I would find myself rushing through these passages so I could return to Christie-Miller’s evocative, lucid prose about the main subject at hand, but the author does a concise and admirable job of analyzing the country’s complex, even surreal, decade without straying too far away from the walls. These sections will feel repetitive for people having lived through and written about them, but they provide a solid foundation for those less familiar with modern Turkey.
The author has done an excellent job assembling a diverse, colorful group of characters, from a longtime heroin addict who has recently kicked his habit, a Kurdish activist, a prickly but passionate woman who ran a local dog shelter, an aging cab drive whose lover tried to commit suicide by throwing herself off the walls, and numerous people who fought valiantly but were ultimately unable to save the homes they build with their hands from gentrification in inner-wall neighborhoods, where ramshackle housing sat on extremely valuable land. Apart from being well-researched, the book looks outward from within, and Christie-Miller excels at describing the beauty that can be found even in a hectic morning commute on public transit packed to the gills:
“That morning Istanbul was submerged in a damp sepia fog, and as we crossed the bridge over the Golden Horn the carriage was flooded with mist-diffused light, bright and comprehensive. I watched people look up from their phones to the windows. Outside were the familiar contours of the old city, its domes, towers and minarets rinsed of colour and rendered into silhouettes. It was the kind of moment at which Istanbul excelled: the sudden shift from the mundane to the numinous, along with an unexpected sense of community, as if we were all connected through the act of partaking in something precious and free,” the author writes.
Ultimately, the walls and the neighborhoods inside of them are a series of gritty, rough areas inhabited by people who left their provinces in Anatolia for better opportunities in The City. These people are tough as nails as they have lived lives full of obstacles, often laced with violence, tragedy and addiction. Christie-Miller tells these stories soberly, it is clear he is empathetic with his interlocutors but not seduced by whatever particular ideology or side they represent. There are moments of comic relief, one being when the author and his friend nearly get into a fight with a large, aggressive man who has been drinking near the walls in Topkapı and misunderstood what was a kind greeting. The man eventually calms down, and later comes back to apologize and ask for a lighter.
To The City reveals the author’s deep love for and keen understanding of Istanbul and Turkey, and does an excellent job of describing the contradictions, ironies and bizarre circumstances that abound, like in this passage about urban renewal in Tokludede, one of inner-wall neighborhoods featured prominently in the book.
“I tried to see it from his side: the new homes were no doubt better insulated and more comfortable than their predecessors, the picturesque shabbiness of the old neighbourhood might be fine for a nostalgic stroll, but not to live in. But I still thought there was a certain absurdity to the whole: a real old neighbourhood knocked down in order to make way for a fake one for people who wanted to live somewhere steeped in history,” the author writes.
These types of absurdities lie in plain view throughout the stretch of the walls, which are currently under restoration by the municipal metropolitan government following years of dilapidation and a disastrous restoration attempt in the 1980’s. Historic monuments in various stages of decline or protection mingle with neighborhoods that sprung up like weeds after the 1950’s and have been transformed by urban renewal efforts. On a hot summer day several years ago, I traversed the length of the walls, beginning at Yedikule and weaving in and out until I reached Ayvansaray. The leisurely journey across the perimeter of the land walls of the old city of Istanbul took about five hours, and invigorated me in spite of the pounding sun. While reading To The City, I was constantly reminded of how awe-inspiring that inimitable trek was.
