Home again

Airports are not at all like the ports at sea used to be. Now those were proper ports, sandwiched by a long storied journey on the starboard side (a journey that ran rather much as a decent narrative should), and on the other port side, an unknown amorphous tale of the future, chaotic and psychically void (except, of course, for the eschaton).

In the port itself is an interval, where farewells are made to the sea, and wagons are loaded for land. One stops, breathes, sets down to a table of conviviality (an unknown word these days), trades if he must, and goes to the library for maps.

We passed through a succession of airports, which -- like so many things these days -- are not like their types. Ataturk Airport in Istanbul reminded me more of Monroeville Mall than Turkey: it is an icon of what some people in Turkey would like Turkey to be -- certainly they do not want it to be Byzantine, because that milieu is shot through with Christianity; and they do not want it to be Ottoman either, because that is simply too Islamic, and it is contrary to the faddish finance Euro-capitalist myth (I like my rich people to be honestly aristocratic and simply despotic, like a pasha bey, instead of bloodless individuals who hide behind holding companies and portfolios).

Charles de Gaulle, somewhere (we were told) near Paris, also looks like a mall in its better moments. We swept through on Monday in one of those. Near our gate was erected a new ageish orange-pink cloud of Big Sur non-music caramelized with wafts of Chanel No. 5: this I noticed as I wandered into the men's room, whose sinks were mere dimples in the white corian, framed by silver statuary that emitted lukewarm water, hot air and pink detergent if you waved your hands in the proper occultic manner. On the other side of Charles de Gaulle, the side we entered the previous Tuesday, the side in construction -- i.e., the side populated by devils and blueprinted by Kafka -- there was, you might say, nothing pink or corian.

JFK is itself.

Pittsburgh International is a proper airport, because it has, standing side by side, statues of Franco Harris in a Steeler uniform, and George Washington in his French and Indian War British uniform. Pittsburgh doesn't deny that it is an airport, and it embraces its cute pledge to welcome everyone into the most livable city.

I saw nothing of Paris. I believe this is customary of layovers in Charles de Gaulle. For irony's sake, I sent 2 postcards home: one of the Eiffel Tower and the other of the Arc de Triomphe, if only to show what I did not see. It is possible, for all I know, that Charles de Gaulle is nowhere near Paris, but is still in New Jersey.

I did not need to see New York on this trip, though I really like the place.

I live in Pittsburgh, and I love my home. But this little essay is not about home, but about a destination. It is about Istanbul, or, as some of us sentimental church-besotted cranks like to call it, Constantinople.

My ten companions and I (one of them is my 18 year old daughter) did not go to Constantinople for a pilgrimage, so I cannot frame the story of our journey, or any of my reminiscences, in the classic terms of peregrination. We traveled to a conference, and a Youth Conference at that. You, fair reader, must know by now from wading through the tide pools of these posts, that I am not at all a good Conference attendee. I get drowsy too much, and my head nods to the rough procession of iambs and dactyls of fairly decent, but sometimes howlingly funny, earphone translation. One can see the author himself in the soft grip of Morpheus: our can-do diocesan webmaster thought it was a moment of profound reflection -- my family knows that this is an impossibility by definition.

My companions and I went to Constantinople to receive the blessing of his All Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and to see the cradle of the seven ecumenical councils. We went to meet Orthodox Christians from around the world: Greece certainly (and predominantly), but also Brazil, Australia, England, Germany, Finland, Estonia, Belgium, France, Ukraine and the Bahamas.

And we went to see the ruins. Some were ruins in states of decrepitude. Others were ruins in states of defacement. Hagia Sophia was a ruin with both.

I wanted to run into Hagia Sophia on Sunday afternoon and kiss the stone floor of the nave. I was prevented, of course, by the press of the crowd, and by Khalil, who insisted, before we got in, since he was the guide of the 5000 people in my guidance party, on telling us all what an icon was. I told my daughter, who with me might never see Byzantium again, that I could tell her myself what an icon was but didn't need to since she knew that sort of thing from infancy, and that we might as well take ourselves on our own tour, so we escaped into the sacred space of Justinian, who used the stones that used to echo the holy complaints and fire of Chrysostom.

We stepped out by the scaffolding, under the calligraphically encrusted dome, and heard the echoes of contemporaneity silently fall to acoustic velvet in the dark, beautiful sorrow.

Wisdom, I whispered, let us be attentive, I wondered, peace be to all, I remembered, in fear of God with faith and with love, I came forward to the ancient solea, and imagined the nine hundred years of faithful who became each one an icon of Christ, because they received Him in faith and substance, and passed starboard into the future of the world.

Hagia Sophia is an old proper port.

The famous image stands, still, of Christ flanked by the Theotokos and the Forerunner, they in supplication, He in grace. The icon, as you might know, has been stripped away, though the Faces remain.

The Patriarch, too, still stands in the Phanar: he calls the situation of the See of Andrew the "Crucified Church," and it is. During the Conference, I remember a passage of mind, in which I thought, "Well, now, if he wants to stay under the Turkish yoke, and if he rejects the thought of gold and power when other potencies call him deficient, then I will no longer pray for his removal to New York, but will pray with him and for him in his place."

My Patriarch rules from under oppression. He has no country, no flag, a little throne. There is no worldly reason for the other patriarchs or hierarchs to answer his call. The Empire lies in ruin: he remains.

His throne,  like Hagia Sophia, might be defaced. But it is still, like Christ in a new third and deconstructed world, in place.

Comments

[Mimi]

Welcome home! It sounds like a lovely trip.

[Gina]

Welcome back. How apt are your characterizations of the airports- that CDG might actually be in New Jersey is hilarious. I think New Jersey would be more orderly, though.

Did you go up to the second floor in Hagia Sophia? Sentimentally, that is where I like to think I became Orthodox, looking at an inkling of Christ Pantocrator through scaffolding. In reality, it was a whisper. It's cruel to me to ponder my years in Turkey were spent so ignorant and nonchalant about the holy places of Orthodoxy.

[Deacon James]

Heaven knows you are right about CDG. A very strange place: we raced through customs to reach our connection to Athens, and as we left the gate to board I was pulled aside by an Inspector Clouseau lookalike. "Monsieur, you will be here how long? A holiday, you say?" He eyed me doubtfully. I do have that sort of Celtic terrorist look. Finally, he let us go.

And as for Pittsburgh International, the Franco Harris doll is wonderful, but the free wireless stole my heart.

Seriously, I'm glad you and the rest of the delegation are back safely. Many prayers accompanied you. It is hard to imagine how His Holiness lives under such intense pressure and hatred.

[Postman]

Thanks, Mimi, for the welcome. And Gina, yes we did go up to the gallery. I went to see the the great icons, of course, and to get a better glimpse of the Platytera at the end of the gallery, and to look more closely, across the gulf of the nave, at Chrysostom my hero. I must confess that I also went to see, especially, the Viking graffiti. And Deacon James, my celtic fearmongering friend, you shouldn't be so insensitive to the Clouseauians. They are only doing their jobs, as work is understood in de Gaulle.

I didn't know I had so many friends until I stepped foot in the Grand Bazaar.

Seriously, thank you all for your kind prayers: they brought us home on a favored wing, and envisioned us with the sight of the Great Church, and Halki, and Chora, and the Phanar.

And, by the way, did I mention that my little group sang "You are the God Who creates miracles" in the Chapel of the Holy Trinity at Halki, at St. George's in the Phanar, and (in the safety of slavonic) at a little raki cafe in Taksim? The ghosts on the breeze, rustling from the Golden Horn, whispered Amen.

[Gina]

I didn't know I had so many friends until I stepped foot in the Grand Bazaar.

LOL My favorite: "Hey lady, come look at my rubbish!"