“the city is not merely setting but allegory: a physical embodiment of the irrepeatibility of experience and the inevitability of decay.”
“Nearly every historic city has its brand of melancholy indelibly associated with it—each variety linked to the scars the city bears. Lisbon has its saudade: a feeling of aimless loss tied to the city’s legacy of vanishing seafarers, explorers shipwrecked in search of Western horizons. Istanbul has huzun: a religiously-tinged brand of melancholy rooted in the city’s nostalgia for its glorious past. As Orhan Pamuk writes, “the people of Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amidst the ruins… these ruins are reminders that the present city is so poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to its former heights of wealth, power and culture.””