I remember being told that the late afternoons are known as the altın saatları -- the golden hours. So it seems.
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Anonymous said…
The phrase "the golden hours" also surfaces (in both English & Turkish) in the world of disaster preparedness/response--it means the critical 72-hour window after an earthquake, when people are most likely to be pulled alive from the rubble (and during which survivors should be prepared to fend for themselves due to breakdown/disruption of infrastructure & government). Açık Radyo's weekly disaster-preparedness show is called Altın Saatler.
(there I go again, raising the specter of catastrophe in the midst of all this beauty....)
I'm just trying to think if there's an equivalent in English -- some weird admixture of catastrophe and the beautiful -- but nothing's coming to mind right now. I suppose it also seems to raise the specter of catastrophe in the context of this photo -- which given where (and when) it is in Kadıköy, seems about as far as one could be (Allah korusun) from anything like that.
"We drive our cars, we put our kids to bed, we revel in the shimmering sunlight, all the while trying to ignore the strange stratified nature of the present, where our most mundane activities play out between the residue of past disasters and the promise of disaster coming back." (David Ulin, on waiting for earthquakes in California)
Kadiköy's actually a "1. derece deprem bölgesi" according to the city hazard maps I've found. Allah korusun indeed.
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(there I go again, raising the specter of catastrophe in the midst of all this beauty....)
Kadiköy's actually a "1. derece deprem bölgesi" according to the city hazard maps I've found. Allah korusun indeed.