Stories about Istanbul

Hello Gentle Readers,

In between my dissertation and other summer fun, I am still preparing for the big trip to Turkey.  I get more excited every day!  Recently I picked up a small book called Istanbul: Tales of the City, with stories by Herman Melville, Simone de Beauvoir, Gore Vidal, and others.  I've read the first one by Bahloal Dana called "The Rose of Istamboul".  The story dates to the Ottoman empire, and is a classic of Turkish literature, though we know very little about Bahloal Dana.  Despite my efforts, I cannot find any wikipedia or other links to the story--and isn't funny how quickly that has become an expectation of mine!

The story is just a few pages long, and is about a young man who has ended up with three wives.  He likes them well enough, but would rather be a mystic and spend his time in holy trances.  He thinks bitterly that women were impulsive, and sought to trap men in their snares...until he meets a beautiful woman who refuses to give him her name.  Indeed, she startles him by appearing while he is in prayer and tells him softly that she is the answer to his prayer.  Her beauty seems immortal to him, and she will not give him her name even when he asks for it, but tells him "Allah in His great mercy has understood that for thee and such as thee no moral woman can suffice.  But as it is necessary that the soul of woman should unite with that even of the most wise and pious of mankind, such as I have been raised up by Allah to attend them in order that the miracle of nature's unity may be made complete".  They continue their conversation and he wonders if she might have been sent by the evil one.  She laughs and reminds him that no one from evil may utter the name Allah.  Finally she tells him that she is mystery, as he has guessed, and also something more, "for which you would gladly give your life, yet which daily you tread under your feet."  He guesses--Love?  Yes, she is love, the kind that surpasses that of a mother for the son or a sailor for the sea.  She leaves before daybreak, telling him that she will come every nightfall in the hopes of meeting him again.

The next night he demands to know her name, and she tells him that he may call her the Rose of Istamboul.  He wants her to become his bride, and then he may know her true name.  She reminds him that they are already bride and groom in eternity...and one guesses she does not want to formalize the arrangement.  He tries to follow her by day to see where she dwells, but she vanishes before him.  His wives at home are becoming suspicious of his nightly wanderings. Weeks pass and he does not see his beloved, who was the answer to his unspoken prayer.  He finally comes to realize that she is "all that woman in her essential native vigour and power and divine sweetness brings to man in one body--the rapturous spirit of that earth of which he is himself a part, the less vivid, the less daedal part, the nymphic fire that from the oak conceives the dryad, that from the stream brings forth the naiad, that pagan fury which not only receives the life of which man is the vessel, but which has power, like its mother the earth, to bring it to harvest and fruition".  After his realization, the next time he enters the mosque, he finds her.  She declares in his embrace that she is that which comes to all poets--the Rose of Istamboul.

There is something about this story...it is distinctly non-Western.  The story is not shy about the connection between ecstasy, desire, the body, prayer and the Divine.  At the same time, it exhibits dualism about women---they are either nags (the wives), or holy spectacles (the Rose).  Yet at the same time---I was enchanted.

Does anyone else have classic Turkish literature that I should read?  I'm ready to be enchanted some more!