SECRET ISTANBUL

A horse’s tomb that has become a place of pilgrimage, a tree held up by a pillar in the garden of a Sufi convent that would herald the end of the world if it fell down, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s glass, a carpet that predicts the end of the Ottoman empire, fragments from the Black Stone of Mecca, the covering of a fountain from Pearl Harbor in the Pacific, a church under the protection of Muhammad, a synagogue that was a landmark for Ashkenazi Jews, a garment worn by the Prophet that was inadvertently ironed, a handful of hot ash that saved the Ottoman empire …