White Istanbul

and to think I never experienced "blanco" back home ....

  The cold gets forgotten, the tingling in the fingers kind of goes away, the closing of the chest gets pushed aside, the view overpowers them all.
  An entire area, as far as the eye can see, covered in white, a white sheet with its thicker patches here and there has come down on the city. And I say a sheet as I remember being a child and watching with astonishment my mum making my bed: watching how that sheet suspended itself in the air, how did it flow, slowly, down, slowly and still going down, by parts, by waves, feeling the air, feeling the movement, seeing myself watching....

  About one o'clock and I'm in class today, right now, sorrounded by twelve 11-year-olds.Class cannot continue. One by one they start standing up, drawn by the white. I cannot nor I want to control them. The sight is magnificent, from sporadic cotton balls  we had to squint to see, to be able to see but white, not even the building in front of us. Just white.

The feeling I get from the kids takes me back to my childhood days. I'm not their teacher now. I'm no more than 11 at the moment....

Istanbul has been white, on and off, for little over a week now. Memories of other white cities where I used to stroll come to mind. Better not lose the opportunity to stroll down this city as well....

  Lucky I am as this time the stroll comes with a story, or better said, several. Stories of the neighbourhood and the people that lived, live, and will live here, the changes they've been through; stories of another stroll taken here years ago;


  stories that take shape in my head as I watch the people walking down these areas: kids throwing snowballs at their school, others ambushing one another, mothers coming back from the market holding onto their grown daughters not to slip on the icy road, a little girl selling "snow potatoes", beautiful stories....


  Walking and talking, we reach the final stairs, the end of the journey takes us through a cementery into a viewpoint, a viewpoint to truly appreciate the white cloak, or is it the a veil? doubt it, we aren't here to forget ;)