Zeitgeist by Bruce SterlingI just had to share this almost 'noir' flavored description of Istanbul, Turkey (and this whole novel would make a great intro piece for Effinger's Marid Audran trilogy) :
[Quote:]
Worn out from repeated jet flights, Starlitz stared murkily out his curtained window.
So it was back to Istanbul, finally. He'd never meant to spend so much time here. The place had a fatal attraction for him. It had been so much stronger than he was, so far beyond his ability to help. The city was neck deep, chin deep, nose deep, in the darkest sumps of history. Istanbul was the unspoken capital of many submerged empires: it had called itself Byzantium, Vizant, Novi Roma, Anthusa, Tsargrad, Constantinople....
Stuck in dense Turkish traffic, their driver clicked on his radio and began to curse a soccer game. The variant districts of Galata, Pera, Beshiktas, and Ortakoy inched beyond the bumpers. It was the Moslem London, the Islamic New York, crammed neighborhoods of millions with as much regional variety as Bloomsbury or The Bronx.
Istanbul. Crumbling ivy-grown Byzantine aqueducts with Turkish NO PARKING signs. Smog-breathing streetside vendors with ring-shaped breadrolls on sticks. Rubber-tired yellow bulldozers parked under the carved stone eaves of mosques.
Tourist-trap nightclubs featuring potbellied Ukrainian dancers. Vast sunshine-yellow billboards imploring bored Turkish housewives to learn English. Cash-card bank machines in prefab kiosks, built to mimic minarets. Pudding shops. Chestnut trees. Spotted wild dogs of premedieval lineage on their timeless garbage patrol.
Istanbul had more vitality than Sofia, or Belgrade, or Baghdad. Despite its best efforts, the twentieth century had not been able to beat the place down. Istanbul had lost its capitalship, but Istanbul had always walked on its own sore feet. It had not been crushed, conquered, and carpet bombed, it had never been forced to exist at the sufferance of others.
[Unquote.]
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