Nektaria Petrou
For years, Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar disappointed me. I was
unimpressed with its quasi-authentic shops selling factory-made Turkish
delight, Made-in-China pashminas, belly-dancer outfits and kitsch stained-glass
lamps.
I wanted to time-travel back to the bazaar that Italian
novelist Edmondo De Amicis described in 1877, a place where “every shop door is
the frame of a picture full of colour and romance.” I wanted to see the narrow
stalls that were more like cupboards than spaces where you could comfortably enter
and browse. I wanted to sit on street divans and drink coffee with the Turkish,
Armenian, Jewish and Greek shopkeepers. I wanted to watch artisans toil away
inside tiny ateliers. But, so I thought, none of that would be possible in a
place where the only thing resembling a renowned Ottoman market were the arches
overhead.
“By asking and asking, you arrive in Baghdad.”
Recently however, I heard about an Armenian hand engraver
named Mayk Zıngık. I had no idea where he worked, but had heard from an elderly
Greek friend that everyone in the bazaar knows Mayk the Engraver. My friend
also quoted a Turkish proverb: “By asking and asking, you arrive in Baghdad.”
After an hour of unfruitful searching and repeated asking, I started thinking
the proverb applied only to Baghdad and not to Zıngık. Then finally, I came
upon a bored old man sitting on a stool outside a dark, closed shop, swinging
his worry beads. If there was anybody who would know Mayk Zıngık, it had to be
him.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said, “ do you know where I can find
Mayk the Engraver?”
“Master Mayk? Follow me.”
The old man escorted me past the nearby police station to
a tiny jewellery shop in Reisoğlu Sokak. The storefront was no more than six
feet wide – the historic size of Grand Bazaar stalls. Moreover, the sign above
the door said Sevan, an Armenian name. I thanked the old man and knocked on the
door.
Fifty-year-old Armenian diamond setter Sevan Hallaçyan,
turning sideways in order to pass through the 18-inch doorway, regretfully
informed me that, unfortunately, Master Mayk only worked on Saturdays. Seeing
my disappointment, he invited me inside the tiny atelier of polished walnut
cabinets and inset mirrors, ordered tea from a nearby concession and offered to
tell me as much as he could about his own traditional craft.
“There’s trust here. If a merchant orders something from
me, I do the work, deliver it and know I’ll have my money within a week.”
“My father became an apprentice engraver in 1942,” said
Hallaçyan, seated at his hornbeam workstation. “He opened this shop in ‘55,
when the minorities still had a strong presence.” With the exception of one
electric tool, Hallaçyan said he practices his craft exactly the way the
Armenian grandmasters have done since the bazaar opened. To demonstrate, he
pulled the leather craftsman’s apron, which is attached to the work desk
itself, over his lap. He took out a half-finished ring – with five large
diamond settings sitting horizontally across three fingers – and stuck it into
an antique wooden holder, then began cutting a setting with a pair of
Lilliputian scissors.
“It took me two years to learn how to cut foil,” he said.
“The slightest pressure will crush it. I don’t even hold it, just direct it.”
He licked a one-carat diamond, rubbed it on a patch of
leather, grabbed the only modern tool I saw him use – a spiral motor – and
sealed the gem in place. But to prove he doesn’t have to use anything electric,
he set the next diamond with a thick pin and a metal fly-swatter-looking tool
called a martela.
Most of Hallaçyan’s business comes from larger retail
shops within the bazaar. “There’s trust here,” he said. “Nobody uses checks. If
a merchant orders something from me, I do the work, deliver it and know I’ll
have my money within a week.”
Hallaçyan later took me to the atelier of 54-year-old
Bedros Muratyan in the bazaar’s Zincirli Han, a two-storey ceramic-red
caravanserai. According to Muratyan, a die sinker, the Zincirli is 500 years
old. Although the building now houses shops and ateliers, when he was a boy, it
was still a han.
“The ground-floor rooms were horse stables,” he said.
“The upper-floor chambers were for travellers. My father converted a guest room
in 1944. Later, he planted the wild chestnut tree at the centre of the
courtyard. Now it’s taller than the han itself.”
In Muratyan’s atelier, the worktables are covered with
antiques, crosses, heads of Atatürk and verses from the Qur’an. There’s an
ancient-looking oven that was installed in the 1940s, a mezzanine with a
rickety spiral staircase and a large hand press which, when given a swing with
just the right amount of force, stamps medallions. Muratyan doesn’t have a
retail space, but his designs are featured in Nişantaşı’s upscale shops.
“He planted the wild chestnut tree at the centre of the
courtyard. Now it’s taller than the han itself.”
“My best childhood memories,” he said, “are the Republic
Day celebrations. We’d set up tables for 150 people in the arcades, play music
and party until the evening. That stopped when I was in my 20s. That’s when we
lost the old artisans who knew how to enjoy life – Turks, Armenians, Greeks,
Jews, Italians.”
As we sipped nescafé from plastic cups in Muratyan’s
mezzanine, I asked what he liked best about the bazaar. “Human values,
comradery, friendship,” he said. “Years ago, if an artisan had a lot of work
one day and his neighbour none, he’d send customers to the neighbour. There’s
less of that old culture now – but compared to other places, it’s still good.”
Mayk the Engraver, whom I finally met in a few weeks
later, in Hallaçyan’s shop, was understandably more nostalgic than his younger
colleagues.
“Today, who will bring a kid to apprentice? Adults don’t
have the patience. The profession is dying.”
Running his fingers over his trimmed white beard, he
said, “I still remember the names of our neighbours 50 years ago. But I hardly
know anybody now. There’s no guild anymore, no apprentices. I came to this shop
in 1970, when I was 14. All I did was watch my master – Sevan’s father – for
two whole years. Today, who will bring a kid to apprentice? Adults don’t have
the patience. The profession is dying.”
He then showed examples of his intricate work: rings
engraved with floral motifs (even on their lower shank interiors), cufflinks
with Armenian letters and a few pieces with three-dimensional engravings, all
of which he does with traditional gravers. “This is art,” he said. “Every piece
is different from the next. Earlier, people used to value that.”
When I asked about his best Grand Bazaar memory, Zıngık
looked over his reading glasses to reply: “It was a Ramadan iftar dinner that
we Armenians sponsored for our Muslim colleagues in 2005. We set up low tables
down the entire length of the street. Everybody had a great time.”
“Human values, comradery, friendship.”
As I left Hallaçyan’s shop that afternoon, I recalled
Edmondo De Amicis’ description of the bazaar’s jewellery quarter: “a dark,
deserted alley, flanked by mean-looking shops, which no one would think contained
the fabulous treasures which are hidden there.” That’s when I realised that the
Grand Bazaar had changed less since 1877 than I had originally supposed.
It is still a place where the persistent visitor can find
hidden treasures.
Nektaria Petrou
Nektaria Petrou is an essayist, short story writer, and
novelist. Her work explores minority experience in Turkey and has been
published in Al-Monitor, Daily Sabah, and Ruminate Magazine. She is currently
completing a novel about the Greeks of Istanbul.
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