It was just as I remembered it.

Outside the Pera Palace Hotel, there’s the same dark red awning, recognizable at a glance from down the street. Still the handsomely dressed porters, standing at the entrance, ready to help guests disembarking from yellow taxis. It may as well have been five years ago.

Only now, as you approach, you notice that they greet you with metal detectors. They’re very polite, official, even apologetic about it. You don’t mind, just as you didn’t mind the security on the metro a few minutes before. You’d rather they do their job than not do it. Even at the highest levels of society, this is a city on edge.

Inside the lobby, a guest is checking out. The other concierge is on the phone. I greet him in Turkish, to which he smiles, pleasantly surprised. He had me marked for a tourist.

“Is the terrace open?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says, waving me in the right direction.

I knew where it was. Me and that terrace go way back. Five years ago, I popped in, an earnest, fresh yabanci, still new to the city. After several hours and drinks on the terrace, I’d ended up checking in for a costly but memorable night.

###

Now, still thinking about that night, I walk up the stairs and into the afternoon tea room, re-acquainting myself with the crystal chandeliers, the domes high overhead, the ghostly piano tinkling in the corner. It is invitingly dark and deserted, save a few tourists having tea and breakfast. In a nearby lounge, a couple of Istanbul businessmen are having coffee. Only one waitress (Elif, her name-badge read), appeared to be working.

Elif greeted me with a cordial, five-star smile.

I ordered coffee, and asked if I could sit on the terrace.

“Of course,” she said. “What kind of coffee would you like? Espresso? Cappuccino? Turkish coffee?”

“Sade filtre kahve.” Just plain, black coffee.

Like the desk clerk, she lights up, having mistaken me for a tourist.

“Turkce biliyorsunuz?” she asks. “Do you know Turkish?”

“Az biliyorum. Burada oturuyorum. Kosyolu’nda.” I wave in the direction of the Asian side.

“Very nice,” she says.

Out on the terrace, Elif brings the coffee, with a biscotti, and asks if I need anything else.

Tempted, I want to ask something like, “How’s business?” But that approach is too direct. Besides, I’m not really here as a reporter, looking to get a quick quote or sound-byte. I remind myself that I’m just a guy who stayed at the hotel some years ago, coming back now just to have a quiet look around.

The terrace is also quiet, but it’s not lunchtime yet. Out of cigarettes. I excuse myself, and walk out to the street in search of a market. Passing the Pera Museum, the Hotel de Londra, elegant under a veil of ivy and all the way over to Istiklal before I find a little shop.

Back at the Pera Palace, the terrace has picked up a few guests, and Elif seems a little busier. More staff are moving about. The bar is not open yet, which is maybe just as well. Last time I put up quite a sizeable bill, which is not a difficult task here.

In a place like the Pera Palace Hotel, you get to thinking about things on a grander scale. You reflect that this hotel, which has been host to everyone from Agatha Christie, to Hemingway, to Mata Hari, has seen its share of the world pass, most of them far more interesting and accomplished.

During the Second World War, which Turkey wisely sat out, Istanbul was a haven for spies, German, British, American, Soviet, et al, and many of them stayed here. They stayed right here in this hotel. It was said that the waiters would often listen in on conversations at the tables, hoping to pass along bits of intelligence, which would undoubtedly bring in better tips than the coffee. In fact, there was even a bomb explosion, right there in the lobby, where we were not ten minutes ago, targeted at British officials during the height of the war.

The hotel has seen its fortunes rise and fall along with the rest of the world. At one point, the hotel and the surrounding neighborhood fell into serious neglect, and a wise tourist would have done well to have avoided it. But in time, the neighborhood, and the hotel, were restored to their former glory. Over the past decade, as Turkey’s star rose, and Istanbul became a trendy tourist capital, the Pera Palace benefited, but there were rivals now along the Bosphorus, the Hilton (where President Obama stayed), the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, and many others.

Nowadays, the tough times have returned. The trendy atmosphere of just a few years ago has been replaced by tension, wariness. Stories have been written about “Istiklal’s Fading Glitter.” The city has apparently been dropped by the fashionable elite.

Not that you notice it so much at the hotel. But then, you’re not supposed to. Five-star service has a way of finessing certain realities, or at least keeping up appearances.

“Another coffee?” asks Elif, passing the table and seeing my empty cup.

I nod, and she takes the cup and disappears back into the lounge.

Thinking now of you, reader. Enough coffee, James, enough scenery. Let Elif get back to work. Let’s get down to business. OK. I suppose you want some dirt on the recent military coup. Why are we not hearing more about that, James? Are you afraid to tell us about it? Are you consciously avoiding the subject?

No, I’m just sick of it. It’s like a battering ram on your consciousness, or one of those kids in school who tell the same joke over and over, saying “Do you get it? Do you get it?”

We get it, or got it. Oh boy, did we ever. It’s been a long summer, and the sound of the fighter jets buzzing over the city that night, and the images of the tanks on the bridges, the dead civilians and policemen, still haunt the mind. The fear of mass arrests, mass dismissals, the ongoing hunt for anti-government supporters or sympathizers – and the rise in anti-Americanism over the perception that the U.S., the Usual Suspect, was behind it all – all these things trouble your sleep. You worry about a lot of things.

There, is that enough? Let’s put the coup attempt, and the ongoing fallout aside, and get back to the terrace.

More people have arrived. It’s Friday, and the forecast is for rain over the weekend. The wind is blowing now up from the Bosphorus, waving through the awning, the trees, and the Turkish flags that hang like banners in the streets. The weather feels like a fitting analogy: we’re in for stormy weather, friend; a long, cold winter, all the tough-minded cliches. Perhaps we’d be better off employing an old Turkish proverb: It’s hard to open an umbrella when it’s stuck up your ass.

###

At the next table, a couple is getting travel tips from a very graceful, charming concierge. From the accent of the couple, they sound European, perhaps Dutch or German. She tells them a shuttle will be arranged to pick them up in front of the hotel the morning.

“What can we do today?”

“Well, it’s very windy today, so it’s not good for walking by the Bosphorus. She advises them on some good places for shopping, and nearby Turkish restaurants as well.

The couple thanks the concierge, and she returns to the lobby. You feel good for the couple, and for the staff at the hotel, to see that not all of the tourists have been scared away. Something should be said for the stalwarts of the world.

You hope they have a good time, and that the wind lets up so they can go for a nice walk along the Bosphorus tomorrow.

“Would you like some more coffee?” A male waiter asks. It’s lunchtime and more staff have arrived. The bar is open now, so I order a beer.

With the beer, I reflect a bit on my last visit, five years ago. I’d sat on the terrace for hours, drinking and reading a book about the hotel’s history, breathing the atmosphere of the hotel as I read, thinking about Agatha Christie, holed up in one of the rooms upstairs – the world thought she’d been kidnapped – and she just wanted to get away, and was reportedly busy writing, “Murder on the Orient Express.” Or of the young Hemingway, when he passed a night at the hotel, en route to covering the Greco-Turkish War (known here as the Turkish War of Independence, something that Hemingway missed. He saw the war as the Christians losing ground to Islam – which makes for good copy, but it was a total misread of the situation. Ataturk established a secular state. Don’t blame Hem, he was only 22 years old, after all). And finally, I thought of the great Ataturk himself,described by Lord Chamberlain as the only true genius to have come out of the First World War.

Ataturk used the hotel as a social gathering point in the early days of the republic, staying up all night drinking raki, searching perhaps for the necessary mental solitude to navigate his fledgling country through the rough waters of the post-War years after nearly a millennium as the Ottoman Empire. In those post-war years, the terrace was a garden, so Ataturk and all the other patrons would sit inside, where the Orient Bar now sits nearly deserted. But it’s still early …

All through the many years, this hotel has served as a kind of barometer, a gauge of the city, and the country’s, many hopes and sorrows.

That night, five years ago, when I stayed as a guest, the idea of staying the night was unexpected, brought on by too many beers and the dreary prospect of a trip all the way back to my flat on the Asian side.

The room had a balcony with a view of the Golden Horn, and that night I’d picked up a few extra beers from a nearby bakkal and taken them up to the balcony. Sleepy, I’d put the extra beers in the fridge and turned in. The bed was spacious, and in the morning the velvet curtains blocked out the sunlight, but not the suddenly yawning abyss of an empty wallet.

###

Back to the present, and to present finances: The garcon brings the beer – a tiny bottle of Efes served in the tiniest of glasses, but costing twice as much as you’d pay at any nearby bar.

I drink the beer, and look around the terrace. Most of the guests are gone, and it’s nearly deserted again. Doesn’t look like a great lunchtime crowd is going to materialize. I finish the beer and ask for the bill. The bills comes to 58 lira (only about 20 dollars, but remember, I’m paid in lira, not dollars, so it’s a lot).

Nostalgia is nice, but it’s getting expensive.

With one last look around the tea room, I walk to the lobby. The waitress, Elif, passes, flashes her five-star smile, and thanks me for coming. The concierges and the porters also offer warm smiles and farewells.

###

Outside, I catch the metro back over to the Asian side. The metro passes the Golden Horn, and you can look out at the vast panorama of the city, the distant skyscrapers in Maslak as well as the Bosphorus and the minarets of the great mosques. It felt good to have taken the trip. The past few weeks I’ve felt really depressed, beat down, by the ceaseless march of events, the latest outbursts of violence. This trip, for whatever reason, seemed to have given me a fresh perspective.

As I said, in most ways the Pera Palace Hotel hasn’t changed since my last visit. It’s still lovely, atmospheric, otherworldly, and if you squint your eyes a certain way, you can almost visualize the great personages of the past sitting at the tables in the lounge, out on the terrace.

But like a lot of things in the city, and in Turkey these days, it doesn’t do to walk around with squinting eyes – best to leave them open. The problem is, the picture keeps jumping out of focus.

Meanwhile, on the metro, the city flashes by, the sunlight flickering. The tunnel appears ahead, and we hurtle on into darkness.

###

James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher. He lives in Istanbul. His latest collection of Letters, “Living in Terror,” can be found at Lulu.com.