IEarly on a cold autumn morning in Istanbul, I'm drinking a sweet drink scented with orchid roots. Salep and smoke hookah. I'm hiding outside Nargire A hookah pipe joint on a small road called Tikaretan Sokak, also known as the old town or historic peninsula. It is home to many of the city's great monuments, including the Hagia Sophia Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and the horse race course. This is also where Inspector Cetin Ikumen, the central character of my novel and subsequent BBC television series The Turkish Detective, lives. Like Ikumen, I also like to walk around the city in the dark early morning hours. When only the toughest, the craziest, the wicked, and those who protect the city roam the city, ghosts also appear.
In common with ikumen, it disappears quickly. I'm a woman of a certain age who walks like a man, wearing a big coat and worn-out boots. I avoid eye contact. I'm here for ghosts. Walking along Tikaretan Sokak, we enter the main thoroughfare, Divan Yol, past shuttered shops and quiet coffee houses, to the royal tombs at the corner of Bab-i-Ali Kadesh. It consists of a small cemetery for Ottoman princes and princesses and a mausoleum housing the remains of three 19th-century sultans, ranging in character from reformers to despots. Now they lie side by side in the dark as I stare through the metal grille. The ghost of Sultan Abdulaziz (1830-1876), or perhaps a white cat, momentarily crossed my vision as I remembered that he was found dead under mysterious circumstances.
If it were daytime today, I would probably head along Divan Yol to Kapalicharsh (Grand Bazaar) and try to find the time portal said to be located in Ichi Bedesten, the center of the Great Market. . However, the existence of Istanbul's esoteric fragments cannot be confirmed or denied at this time, as the bazaar closes at 7 p.m. At 3 a.m., a quick return to Byzantium or, who knows what, we're being denied, proceed there. Instead, I went back the way I came and sat cross-legged on a bench next to a vast square that was once Byzantium's racetrack. This can be accessed from Meydani Kadesh Street, which is directly opposite Tikaretan Sokaku. Cetin Ikumen can see it from his apartment balcony, but like me, he prefers to go there.
Not even a passing policeman noticed me as I fantasized about the Great Roman Circus, first built by Emperor Septimius Severus in 203 AD. Renovated in 324 AD by Constantine the Great, the city's first Christian emperor, this is where the mighty Byzantine Empire rewarded its people with bloody chariot races between political factions known as the Greens and the Blues. The rivalry between these teams, supported by opposing political parties, became legendary and led to a riot in 532 AD that left 30,000 people dead.
I'd like to say that it's rare for someone to have seen a ghostly tank running around a racetrack at night, but I'd say that almost everyone has seen a ghostly tank except for me. No. But I remain undaunted, close my eyes and listen. At first he faints, but when he opens his eyes again, the hissing sound continues and he walks towards the snake pillar. This pillar, set low into the ground in the center of the racecourse, known as the spina, is now little more than a short bronze candy twist. But it wasn't always like this. Built to commemorate the Greek victory over the Persians in 479 BC, it was once much taller and topped by three serpent heads with bowls of pure gold . With my eyes half-closed, I can see them writhing in agony. As a friend of snakes, born under the zodiac sign of Ophiuchus (arguably the 13th sign of the zodiac), I'm tired of slimy ghosts.
Tendrils roll in and fog begins to cross the city from the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. The ship's foghorn groaned into the night like a cursed soul, and I, along with a small tribe of local cats, headed for the sacred precincts of Hagia Sophia. Although it is now a mosque, until recently Hagia Sophia was a museum. Previously an Ottoman mosque, it was built in 360 AD as a Byzantine Orthodox church. It has been rebuilt three times, and although the current building was built in 537 AD, the sacred building stood on this site for nearly 17 centuries.
My little companion, Istanbul's famous feline companion, doesn't care about history and just hangs out with me in case I magically produce food. But I like being with them, their soft yawns, their furry bodies curling around my legs. There are echoes of the long-dead emperors and empresses of the Byzantine Empire. This entire area was once the great palace of the Byzantine Empire. Now deep underground, the Great Palace has rooms made entirely of red porphyry stone, and all true members of the royal family were born there. This is where the expression “born purple” came from.
This place is full of legends. There are stories about the tunnels that connect the great church and the royal box on the racecourse, about how a scorned empress puts out the eyes of her unfaithful lovers, and about the production of aphrodisiacs, magic spells, and youth-recovering skin creams. Contains stories, etc. But my favorite myth concerns what happened at Hagia Sophia on the night of May 29, 1453.
After a siege that lasted 53 days, Ottoman Turkish forces under the command of 21-year-old Sultan Mehmet II entered what was then known as Constantinople and invaded the church. The priests of Hagia Sophia, who had been praying day and night for weeks for deliverance from the Turks, never stopped their devotion to the young sultan who rode up to the altar on a white stallion.
It is said that as they continued to pray, they turned away from Mehmet and disappeared into the walls of the building, where they remain to this day, awaiting the return of their once mighty empire.
The shifting contours of the mist-shrouded buildings make you wonder, almost believably, what those priests were doing all this time, if they were still there. I imagine them as emaciated figures dressed in black, their ancient eyes always searching for a future that will never come. The cats, whose ancestry is much older than the clergy, may and probably do know, but my existence is no longer present as another human materializes and feeds them. It's irrelevant.
I cross Divan Yor and return to the home of Tikaretan Sokaku and my hero, Cetin Ikumen. As I entered the entrance of the small boulevard, the night closed around me and I disappeared into darkness.
Barbara Nadel's latest Ikumen mystery, The Darkest Night, is published by Headline (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy here: guardianbookshop.com. Shipping charges may apply.
