My certainty may seem premature -- I am, after all, still in the airport -- but I will be back.
I know because of the water.
As the cab drove up I watched IB's mum repeat the action that saw me off on a sweltering August night, watched the glass tip and the water fall from the first-story window to the plants below.
Barely four months later I am sipping tea at Ortakoy, my senses solaced by the blues of the Bosphorus.
I like discovering cities for the first time, but not as much as I like returning to them afterwards.
Especially Istanbul. Enormous, impatient, paradoxes at every corner -- it is a vicious city. 10 euros to get in; a slice of your soul to get out.The waters of the tepid gulf, the vast Atlantic, the frozen St Laurent are the shattered mirror in which I recognize myself.
Istanbul has a slice of my soul and a shard of my mirror.
I know because of the water.
