DARK LORD DOOR
This section of the Byzantine Corridor of Lord runs under Palatium Restaurant, formerly Asia Minor Carpets, and behind Kathisma Restaurant on the street below. The Corridor ran from the Church of Lord to the Magnaura Palace, and along it the Empress walked, in torchlight procession, from her marriage in the Church to its consummation in the Palace. This is the lower section, manned by guards and kept hot by fires to warm the processional above. The door leads to a cistern and a bath.
MEHMET BASDOGAN
Mehmet Bey, patriarch of Asia Minor Carpets, which has a Byzantine ruin in its basement: a section of the Corridor of Lord. I’ve drawn it many times, and felt I should draw the man who excavated it at least once. The carpet shop is now Palatium Restaurant, near Four Seasons Sultanahmet, and you can still go down into its basement and see Byzantium.
DOUBLE DOOR LORD
-Chill silence, water dripping, presence-Magnaura Palace 21 August – Another section of the Corridor of Lord Ruin under Asia Minor, now Palatium Restaurant. We’re looking from a corridor through a door across the Roman bath to a chamber with a bricked-up window or doorway. The floor is plywood, about three feet above the original floor. I hope this drawing conveys some of the sense of so much vanished life. Employees said the place was haunted, but I only felt silence and a sense of waiting.
COOL IRAQUIS
-29 August 05 – Cool under fire: Four au courant Iraquis at Ludwigs: Tarub, a poet, & Ammar live in Istanbul…
COOL IRAQUIS
…Aida & Nazar are raising 4 kids in Baghdad- here for 3 month holiday and may stay. I hope so! – On the roof at Ludwig’s.
HAPPY MUSIC NIGHT
-Uncle Guy & Clay said later that this mini-concert by Gurhan & friend was a high point of their visit. Sultanahmet October 05—–My wonderful Uncles Guy and Clay came all the way to Istanbul to see me, my first year here. I was teary-eyed the whole time. I am so lucky, and so happy to have swell friends to share music and make us all feel at home.
