The Irish-American physicist, academic and traveler John Freely wrote
more than sixty lively books on travel, history and science before he
died in 2017, aged 90. But It was Istanbul, where he emigrated with his
family in 1960 to take up a post teaching physics at the American Robert
College, that turned him into a writer. His first book, Strolling
Through Istanbul, written with his fellow academic Hilary Sumner-Boyd,
was an instant success when it was published in 1972 and has never been
out of print since.
With the exception of Oğuz, so thin that he was known as The Ghost
because he barely cast a shadow, everyone in John Freely's rumbustious
memoir, including the author himself, is larger than life. Bohemian
Istanbul was a haven for myriad misfits who found their feet in the
city. Clamorous, glamorous, eccentric, cosmopolitan and frequently
outrageous, they included the 'berserker' Peter Pfeiffer, a resourceful
exile with three passports; Aliye Berger, the beautiful queen of
bohemian Pera; the writer James Baldwin; and, fleetingly, the future
Pope John XXIII.
This elegy for a lost world encapsulates the flavor of their daily life
and nightly excesses. Well lubricated with lemon vodka and Hill
Cocktails served by Sumner-Boyd's gloomy housekeeper, Monik Depressive,
the Freely crowd weave their way from the Galatasaray fish market and
the taverns of Çiçek Pasajı to the Russian restaurant Rejans, and
frequently on to the Freely household on the Bosphorus hills, where a
party will soon be in full swing and eggnog flowing freely. Stamboul
Ghosts is illustrated with Ara Guler's poignant black-and-white
photographs, which make of Freely's beloved city an evocative stage-set.
