Seyhanstantinople

September 30, 2008

Seyhan, the little that I know her, has me entirely confused.

Seyhan, as far as I can tell, hasn’t passed a mirror that she hasn’t checked her makeup or her hair in. She is young, stunning, and well aware of it. Seyhan is also a feminist. And – as a tattoo of Ataturk’s signature on her wrist goes to show – a Kemalist. And, in her own words, a committed Muslim. And a dancer. Pictures of her performances, at least the ones she’s proudly shown me, feature her wearing a loincloth down low, whatever it takes to best expose her prodigious cleavage up top, laboriously gyrating to a hip-hop song.

It’s Ramadan and Seyhan, most of the time, sleeps. For all that Ramadan may mean to her – a religious duty, an cultural tradition, an exercise in self discipline, a hardcore diet regimen or, just as well, all of the above – it is more of an ordeal with every coming year. Not because Seyhan’s resolve to forego food and drink from dawn till dusk is growing weaker – it isn’t – but because with every coming year Ramadan keeps arriving earlier. When she was little, Ramadan, in line with the Muslim 354-day lunar calendar, used to come in early spring. By the time she was ten, it began in February. When she was twenty, it came in October. This year, when she turned twenty-four, it began in early September. September, in Istanbul, spells temperatures than routinely reach into the mid-30, which means that going an entire day without so much as a drop of water is increasingly harder to bear.

No matter. Seyhan – her world as confused and as confusing as Istanbul itself – perseveres and keeps the fast.