Zeynep Kaya

I live in Balat, in a narrow wooden house with a crooked staircase, next to a neighbour who has been sitting at the same window for forty years. When I moved here in 2014 it was a poor neighbourhood that tourists avoided. Now it is on every Instagram list, and I try to show it with some respect: the Greek, Armenian and Jewish history of the Golden Horn, the Fener Greek school on the hill, the Bulgarian iron church, the small tea gardens where the old men play okey. I trained as an art restorer and worked on Byzantine mosaics, so my second walk goes to the Chora church, recently reopened as a mosque, and along the Theodosian land walls. I speak French from my Lycée years. Now I show Istanbul live on a video call, phone in hand, and I answer questions as they come.