They had decided against the usual tours and had instead wandered the city on foot, soaking in its atmosphere—the sights, the sounds, the smells, the people. Once hailed the New Rome, Istanbul was a city of hills with a vast and varied narrative. Straddling both the European and Asian continents, it had been the center of the Roman, Latin and Byzantine Empires, and had seen the fall of Constantine Palaeologos during a fierce battle against the Ottomans. A descendant of Constantine the Great—the first Christian Roman emperor—Palaeologos was said to have been rescued on the battlefield by an angel and was awaiting resurrection to this very day. Batty wasn’t holding his breath. Like its culture, Istanbul was a mix of old and new, traditional and modern. Ancient mosques and synagogues and cathedrals adorned traffic-choked streets full of towering high-rises. Although its government was secular, the place breathed Old World spirituality, a feeling that was helped considerably by the call for prayer that blasted over loudspeakers at regular intervals throughout the day.
