I’ve always been drawn to port cities. As a young man living in Eureka, I sensed something in that immense, broad presence blowing offshore: the Pacific, with its fog-obscuring assurance, and the promise of adventures beyond, gave the confidence to take one’s measure against the world.

Many years later, I set down in Istanbul. After several years – call it a grand detour – of living in Prague, I felt a great sense of relief the minute I caught the unmistakable scent of the Bosphorus. The sea! How I had missed it!

Taking the ferry from the European side to the Asian side, passing the shipyards, the docks, the huge container ships, the cruise ships, the war ships, with all their bustle and hurry and activity, their faraway destinations, was energizing, evocative.

It was great to be back.

There is a luminous, liminal quality about this city – and about all port cities – that makes living here always something special. Even in this age of terrorism, regional conflict, and the ever-growing shadow of war. In New York, I espied similar feelings, I suppose, and intuited them in San Francisco. These port cities also command their horizons, and give you a feeling of majesty, of standing in a gateway, the former to America and the latter to the Orient.

But I never lived in New York or San Francisco. In those places, I was merely a tourist, passing through.

Istanbul, for whatever reason, is the place that has become my port of destination, my home.

You may be familiar with Napoleon’s famous quote, that if the Earth were a single state, Istanbul would be its capital. Boosterism aside, I’d have to agree. For even though Istanbul shares many of the same characteristics of other port cities, there is something – blame it on geography – that other great cities lack. New York, San Francisco, Capetown, Melbourne, Shanghai, Eureka… none of these cities bring worlds together quite the way this city does. And it’s not just the usual cross-continent, cross-culture cliches you read about in the guidebooks.

The city sits on on a grand, revolving balcony, looking out at the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, Europe, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. It’s no accident that the ancient Silk Road, with its spice trade, passed through this neck of the woods. Actually, on that note, the new Silk Road will likely do the same, only nowadays the Orient produces a lot more things than spices.

Yes, there are the downsides: the soul-killing traffic, the constant noise – even at 3 a.m. your sleep can be startled by car horns and barking dogs – the ever-rising cost of living, not to mention the heightened security thanks to terror attacks. Oh, and earthquakes, too. Forecasters predict the Big One will strike Istanbul sometime in the next ten years, even bigger than the 1999 ‘quake that leveled some parts of the city and resulted in nearly 20,000 deaths.

And it’s true that we do think about leaving. Just the other day – probably in the wake of the Reina nightclub shooting – my wife and I were asking each other, why don’t we live somewhere else? Turkey has no shortage of quieter, picturesque locales. Why not somewhere along the Aegean – Izmir or Canakkale? We also nurse a secret dream of joining her parents in Anamur on the south coast. We could get jobs on a banana farm, and each day go for a swim in the blue-honeyed waters of the Med. It’s a kind, nourishing image, except that I for one can’t see myself picking bananas.

Other times we think of going to America (or at least we did until the recent presidential election, and Trump started talking about banning Muslims from entering the country, which does not exactly bode well for my wife).

Politics come into play at some point. But they are not the lasting point. Politics change, leaders come and go. For the most part, port cities remain. I learned that much in my years writing about California politics. You can’t let politics dictate how you live your life, or at least you try not to let them do so.

These past months have been hard, I won’t lie. The state of emergency in Turkey continues, ever since last July’s failed coup attempt. Police can still stop and detain you for little or no reason. Many people, including journalists, remain locked up in prisons, many on the scantest of evidence. The country remains at war with ISIS and Kurdish “terrorists” in Syria. Millions of refugees continue to arrive day after day. Nothing changes. Good news is to hard to find in this part of the world, friend.

Across the world, in America, things don’t seem to be all that much better. For a long time, we thought we had that distant hope on the horizon. Not for now, it seems.

But when I stop and think about it – my wife, I should say, would have a stronger opinion – why should things be any other way? The only constant is change, right?

I think back to another great port city, one that I have yet to visit (soon!): Cairo. Of course, Cairo does not sit on the sea, but rather along the Nile River. Still, I think back to those lectures we had in school. How for centuries, a great civilization flourished there. The ancient Egyptians saw themselves as blessed, for they were surrounded, protected, by natural barriers – a vast desert to the west, seas to the north and east, and steep cataracts to the south. They were obscured, protected against change.

These ancients saw this insulated world – with a clear, cloudless sky, and the calm, giving waters of the Nile – as the source of their great civilization. How did that work out for them? Even the Egyptians could not live in such splendid isolation forever. You cannot hide from the world, not forever. Eventually, not only will it find you, but also you will have let the true wonders of the world pass you by.

Here in Istanbul, there’s never any chance of that happening. That is what I mean when I say the city has a luminous liminal quality to it. The world is too much with it, in all the good, the bad, the very bad, and the terrible. You never stop feeling here you are an eternal passenger, a traveler. Each day – each moment – has in it something of chance, an adventure. If that’s a cliché, it’s one that I’ll happily accept. Better to be standing astride a rising tide, with all its tumult, than drowning in still waters.

But then, perhaps that is an apt metaphor for this new age we now live in.

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James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer living in Istanbul.