The Hilton occupies an expensive stretch of the Bosporus. The British Fleet is in and the Hilton is swarming with the Queen’s tars, most of them headed for the gaming tables. The lobby, clicking with dice and clacking with chips, sounds like Vegas. Even the view from the dining room, the fleet lit up with a thousand lights, looks like Vegas’s hotel strip. Eventually the continental menu gets our attention. In Athens, where we’ve just been, we gorged on ethnic food and in Capadoccia where we’re headed on a bus tour we’ll have a surfeit of dolmas and shish kabob. Tonight we’ll make due with veal cordon bleu. We’ve had a big day; we’re exhausted. We literally pray as we turn in: "Dear God, let the traffic stop tonight." It doesn’t. Horns blare, brakes screech and the red-and-white neon lights outside our widow blink "Hayim Otel" all night, our own sound and light show. Miraculously we sleep. In the morning the scene from our window reminds us why we’ve chosen to stay in the Sirkeci district. Straight ahead at the end of a short narrow lane, crowded with fruit stalls and book kiosks, we make out the dock we’ll return to and just before it, the Sirici Station. It’s hard to believe this was the end of the line for the fabled Orient Express, the train that brought "the beautiful people" from Paris to Istanbul. Now the Orient Express ferries tourists from Paris to Venice on a package tour.
The station we walk into is quiet, forlorn, its glass dome, tiled walls and floor haven’t seen soap since Mata Hari rode into town. Nowadays the station handles only suburban traffic, with the beaches of the Sea of Marmara the most important destination. We look everywhere, but Agatha Christies’ Hercule Poirot is nowhere about. Before we left home I fell in love with a Turkish folk song I heard on the radio called "Uskudar." It had a kind of modified belly dance rhythm, its melody plaintive yet upbeat, its words, I think, celebrating that vast suburb across the Bosporus in Asia Minor. I’ve been humming "Uskudar, Oh, Uskudar" ever since we arrived in Istanbul.
