Marketplace

Rain arrives softly in Istanbul, as though the city has been waiting for a quieter language. It touches the stone and does not ask permission. For a while, everything near me gathers its dark shine: the ledges, the narrow streets, the old walls holding their patient warmth. I know this smell now. It is becoming one of the smells I know, alongside salt air and the faint sweetness of street confection folded into paper cones.