Looking through cheap accomodation in Istanbul for the work I'm doing the whole day, the sun set in the grey London sky. It's been raining constantly since the last week, and the last 2 days have been horribly windy and thunderous, and cold.

I am reminded of the mild autumn evenings of my childhood and young age Istanbul years. Nowadays I wear even more lightly despite the weather being much colder and wet in London. But back home, I would love the cold for its curiosity and hate it for its loneliness and threat.


I would wander around the streets of Harbiye or Taksim, running away from the familiar crowds of the main street. Side streets, narrow streets, street after street, flooded with water and filled with mud. People would look brown or ash-colour like the cigarettes they smoked and heavily in thought whilst making their way home.


Around 5 PM, like right now at the current hour in London, the smell of the burnt coal would migrate from the lower valleys of Dolapdere and lower Elmadag upwards into Taksim-Harbiye axis. The typical middle-aged Turkish men would look slightly tired if they had climed up the hill, and I would gaze through them to see some more innocence.


Now, I just came across a picture of a doorman at a cheap hotel, whilst researching for work.


I will share this tiny, skewed resolution of the young man. It fits the curious context where a total stranger finds mild winter comfort. In a very, very small scale...