Sublime

Gustave Flaubert, who visited Istanbul 102 years before my birth, was struck by the variety of life in its teeming streets; in one of his letters he predicted that in a century’s time it would be the capital of the world. The reverse came true: After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the world almost forgot that Istanbul existed.

not just the cobblestone streets and pavements, the iron grilles on the windows or the empty, ramshackle wooden houses—rather, it is the suggestion that, with evening having just fallen, these two people dragging long shadows with them on their way home are actually pulling the blanket of night over the entire city.