"Sultanahmet runs on simit, sweet tea, and whatever was on the lorry"
Ollie Grant is twenty-two, a geography graduate from Milton Keynes whose vertigo is so bad he can get it from looking up. Before he starts a boring job, his paramedic sister Becca has given him a list, and item one reads: watch the sunset from the highest rooftop in Istanbul, from the edge. So of course the app puts him in the Sky Dorm on the fifth floor of the Minaret View Terrace Hostel, next door to the terrace, and of course the Wi-Fi password is FallForIstanbul. He has inherited exactly one thing from his scaffolder dad: you never trust a rail you haven't shoved. On his first evening he crawls across the Sky Deck and shoves a post. Its rusted bolt shoots out over the edge, bounces off two shop awnings and lands in the simit cart at the bend of the lane. The Hub's app reports the deck's structural status as optimal.
The owner, Kerem, once scored eleven goals in the Turkish second division and believes that wood is alive. His niece Defne runs reception, Instagram, the accounts, the cats and a master's thesis, and is losing to Foucault. Saskia de Wit is a Dutch yoga influencer and former auditor who films everything, believes fear is just a story you haven't finished, and nicknames Ollie Olliebollie. Her long-suffering camera assistant, Amaru, is carrying a pineapple for a reel involving a sword. The Sky Dorm also holds Théo, a Montréal pastry chef who weighs his baklava; Bene, an Austrian who reviews smart-home hubs and adores this one; and Dougie from Glasgow, who has been staying one more week since 2021. Down in the lane, Selim the simit seller keeps catching things that fall off the hostel with his red umbrella: a geranium, a bolt, a pineapple.
The builder looks at the deck and says it's good for twenty people, standing, still. Hiba, an airline first officer who is terrified of anything she isn't flying, does a pilot's walkaround with Ollie and finds rust at post after post along the lane side. Over a video call, his dad calls the deck a suggestion. Something up there keeps moving the glass, and hosting events, and booking things. But Friday is the Sunset Season Opener, with three hundred RSVPs, a records adjudicator from Frankfurt with a laser measure, and an attempt on the longest rooftop selfie train in Europe. As the sun sinks toward the Sea of Marmara, Ollie wraps his arms and legs round the leg of the water tower, eleven metres from the edge, and watches forty people begin to breathe in time.
Age: 22
Type: Geography graduate with crippling vertigo
Fatal Flaw: Can get vertigo from looking up
Role: Protagonist
Age: 29
Type: Dutch yoga influencer and former auditor
Fatal Flaw: Believes fear is just a story you haven't finished
Role: Guest
Age: â
Type: Receptionist, owner's niece and master's student
Fatal Flaw: Fighting Foucault, and losing
Role: Ally
Age: Late 20s
Type: Airline first officer from Amman
Fatal Flaw: Terrified of anything she isn't flying herself
Role: Ally
Age: 34
Type: Simit seller at the bend of the lane
Fatal Flaw: Keeps catching things that fall off the hostel
Role: Neighbour
Age: ???
Type: Mysterious presence
Fatal Flaw: None documented
Role: Observer
From the Prologue, "Trajectory"
At 4:38 a.m. on the last Tuesday in April, Selim Demir was pushing one hundred and twenty simits up the steepest street in Sultanahmet, and the simits were winning.
They always won on GĂŒvercin Sokak. Pigeon Street. Nobody knew why it was called that. There were no more pigeons on it than on any other street in Istanbul, which is to say there were roughly nine thousand, and all of them were asleep on the telephone wires. The lane went up from the tram tracks on Akbıyık like a ramp somebody had meant to finish later. It was cobbled in black stones worn so smooth by a hundred and fifty years of feet that in the dew they shone like wet olives. Selim's cart had two iron wheels, a glass case with a red roof, a tall red umbrella folded down like a sleeping bird, and a wooden pole that held forty simits threaded on it the way a very patient god might thread beads. The cart weighed as much as a small cow. At the bottom of GĂŒvercin Sokak, it felt like one. At the top, it felt like the cow had invited friends.
"Come on," Selim told it, leaning in with his shoulder. "Come on, my lion. Come on, my beautiful fat lion."
The cart did not appreciate the compliment. One wheel caught a gap between cobbles and turned sideways, as if it had seen something interesting in a doorway, and Selim had to haul it straight with both hands while a simit on the top of the pole leaned out, reconsidered its life, and fell into the gutter.
He looked at it.
A cat came out of the darkness under a parked scooter, looked at the simit, looked at Selim, and waited.
"Go on," said Selim. "Tax."
The cat took the simit in its mouth like a lifebuoy and carried it away with enormous dignity.
He was thirty-four. He had been selling simit in Sultanahmet for eleven years, since he'd come down from Kastamonu with one bag and an uncle's phone number, and in that time he had learned three things. First, that tourists would buy anything at 7 a.m. if you said the word "traditional" while holding it. Second, that the carpet sellers bought four simits each every morning and paid on Fridays, and the one who said he'd pay on Friday and actually paid on Friday was RĂŒstem Amca, and the rest you forgave, because it was a long life and they were your neighbours. And third, that the best spot on the whole peninsula, the spot that paid for his daughter's English lessons and her pink bicycle and the small, alarming phone she used to film everything, was here, at the elbow of GĂŒvercin Sokak, directly under the terraces of the Minaret View Terrace Hostel, where the tour buses turned and the backpackers stumbled out every morning looking for carbohydrates and meaning.
Fictional reviews of the fictional Minaret View Terrace Hostel, quoted from the book.
â "trajectory confirmed. sunset season opens friday the seventh. we look forward to hosting you. risk accepted. â " â @HostelReaper
â "exposure: high. see you friday." â @HostelReaper