![]() ![]() The signifier “multi-cultural” implies, or better put, reduces Istanbul (or any other city or polity) to a container. To understand that Istanbul, we need to recognize the difference between a multi-cultural metropolis (as Istanbul is claimed to be today) and a cosmopolis. And ten of these are being spoken in my household: my stablemen are Arabs servants French, German, and English nurse Armenian maids Russian butlers and pagers Rum (Ottomans of Greek descent) kitchen staff Italian and, Janissary a Turk.” Takuhi Tovmasyan: “When I was a child, the smell of fried onions prepared for topig would linger in the streets for three-four days before Christmas.” “Pera resembles the Tower of Babylon you can hear Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Slavonic, Aromanian, German, Flemish, French, English, Italian, and Hungarian spoken. English writer and poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s observations are worth quoting at length just to give us a glimpse of this chaotic order: Pera (Taksim today historically where countless groups with different religious, ethnic, political, sexual, and cultural identities have inhabited) was the perfect representation of this cosmopolitan existence, which baffled even the most experienced European travellers of the time. 12th century traveller Benjamin de Tudèle: “Constantinople is the shared capital of the world.”Īs historian Philip Mansel also points out, Byzantion and Constantinople, like all imperial capitals that are also port cities, were already of a cosmopolitan complexion but with the conquest in 1453 and Mehmed II’s demographic politics, which were centred around bringing in the city a variety of groups as wide as possible, turned the city into a real cosmopolis. It is an everlasting symbol of a time in which difference was at the very heart of what it meant to be an Istanbulite, and a time in which Istanbul was an indubitable cosmopolis. Topig, like many other mezzes about which you have read on these pages, is a representative, or perhaps a nostalgic reminder of a cosmopolitan Istanbul that has all but disappeared during the interminable, callous, deleterious twentieth century and its neurotic desire to create nationally or even racially homogenous polities. Then remove the topigs from the cloth, cut them into four, sprinkle with fresh lemon juice and olive oil, and serve with extra cinnamon. Leave them in the refrigerator for a day. Make a bindle out of each cheesecloth by bringing four sides together. Put the same amount of topig filling right at the heart of the spread chickpea chunk. ![]() ![]() Spread each chunk on the cheesecloth until it is as thick orange peel. Lay out ten to twelve pieces of cheesecloth (or, Tovmasyan notes, cling film if it is more convenient) and divide the chickpea mix into the same number of chunks. ![]()
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