The Destruction of the Pashas' Mansion: A Sad Tour of the Streets(5)

  When these shops went out of fashionand closed one by one to make way for a string of other, more and modern enterprises, my brother and I would play a game--less inspired by nostalgia than to test our memories--that went like this: one of us would say, "The shop next to the Girls' Night School," and the other would list its later incarnations: "The Greek Lady's pastry shop, a florist, a handbag store, a watch shop, a bookmaker, a gallery bookshop, and a pharmacy."

  Before entering the cavelike shop where for fifty years a man named Alaaddin sold cigarettes, toys, newspapers, and stationary, I would, by design, ask my mother to buy me a whistle or a few marbles, a coloring book or a yo-yo. As soon as she put the present into her handbag, I'd be seized by an impatience to go home. But it wasn't only the glamour of the new toy.

  "Let's walk as far as the park," my mother would say, but all at once sharp pains would travel up my legs to my chest, and I knew I could walk no farther. Years later, when my daughter was the same age and we went out for a walk, whe would complain of a remarkably similar affliction; when we took her to the doctor, he diagnosed ordinary fatigue and growing pains. once fatigue had eaten into me, the streets and shopwindows that had been captivating only moments ago would slowly drain of color and I'd begin to see the whole city in black an white.

  "Mummy, pick me up!"

  "Let's wals as far as Macka," my mother would say. "We'll go back on the tram."

    The trams had been going up and down our street since 1914, connecting Macka and Nisantasi to Taksim Square, Tunel, the Galata Bridge, and all the other old, poor, historic neighborhoods that then seemed belong to another country. When I went to bed in the early evenings, I'd be lulled to sleep by the melancholy music of the trams. I loved their wooden interiors, the indigo-blue glass on the bolted door between the driver's "station" and the passenger area; I loved the crank that the driver would let me play with if we got on at the end of the line and had to wait to leave...until we could travel home again, the streets, the apartments, and even the trees in black and white.