Season of Change

Windy days in Istanbul. Which wind is this time? The lodos? The poyraz? The yildiz or the karayel? According to my compass, this wind is blowing in from the northwest which would make it the karayel, 'the black wind', a winter wind foreshadowing bad weather. It's been blowing this way now for the past 3 or 4 days. We had a brief winter storm yesterday, a sudden burst of snow as if Boreas, the God of the North Wind, sneezed. The convulsion ripped over Istanbul in a brief and violent burst of white, streaking through the air almost parallel to the ground. It came without warning and left just as quickly...just a portent, I think, of things to come.

Today, the sun is shining brightly but the wind continues to howl. The Golden Horn, azure for much of the summer, now shifts unpredictably through every shade of grey to almost black, back to blue and again through the murk and madness of the coming season. Moods are also shifting, effervescing and colliding with each other in this season of change; flames are dying out, embers slipping sadly into blackness. Istanbul retreats gradually, almost imperceptibly into its pupal state, to wait out another winter only to emerge again next spring in its full glory.