Letters from Istanbul... Wine, Women, and the Hill That Knows My Name

One old wine cellar, one steep hill, and the city that started whispering my name back to me.

Do you remember that woman I told you about last time? Celeste, from the bus? Well. Sit down. Pour yourself something. Because here’s what happened next.

She called a few days after I got back. Casual, easy, like we’d known each other longer than one bus ride in the dark. She was staying with a friend — a woman named Darcy, an American who’s been living here long enough to have opinions about which neighborhoods have the best börek, which apparently is the mark of someone who has truly arrived. Darcy, Celeste told me, knew a place. A restaurant tucked inside an old wine cellar, very old world, the kind of place that exists in Istanbul the way all the best things do — down a side street, through a door that doesn’t announce itself, into something you would never find unless someone who loved you took you there.

Did I want to come?

I said yes before she finished asking.