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Buy a digital subscription Go to the Digital EditionTwo isolated villages share an Ancient way of communicating across mountainous ravines. Andriëtte Stathi-Schoorel captures the last echoes in Greece and Turkey
It was at the Megaron Mousikis festival in Athens in 1995 that I first witnessed the remarkable phenomenon of whistled speech. Four villagers from Antia, on the island of Euboia, stood at one end of the big hall and whistled messages to another group in the opposite gallery, while a fellow villager translated for the audience.
“Are you going fishing today?” one villager whistled across the hall.
“How many goats are you going to transport to Karystos?”
“I’m coming right now, just wait a second…”
… There are four other places where whistled speech is part of a way of life: in the Canary Island of Gomera, in the Pyrenees, in Mexico, and in Kuşköy on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, all of whose isolated, mountainous locations are strikingly similar.
One hundred and ninety years after the young Charlton Whittall first opened for business in Izmir, the members of this great dynasty are dispersed throughout the world. In June 359 descendants gathered at a reunion in London to celebrate the one thing that still inspires them all: their memories of life in Turkey.
An Egyptian rubbish heap reveals its buried treasure, mysterious birds deceive the eye, and Chinese clouds have silver linings. Philippa Scott continues her guide to the world of rug collecting
In the 1950s, a palely beautiful summerhouse on the Bosphorus made tbe perfect playground for the cream of café society. Now its luminous, airy rooms, emptied of fuss and colour, reveal their natural beauty. Patricia Daunt uncovers the colourful past of Ratip Efendi’s yali.
A Turkish-inspired garden on the Cambridge Fens. Two Turkish passions meet in John Drake’s beautiful garden: a love of symmetry and an abundance of wild flowers. Here the garden historian acknowledges his debt to the Turkish ideal of paradise on earth.
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When Ottoman sultans wanted to outshine European monarchs by the end of the sixteenth century they were choosing elaborate entertainments as their ammunition rather than solemn victory processions. In the second article in her series on East-West rivalry, Christine Thomson focuses on the Istanbul festivities of 1582, a spectacular street party lasting almost two months.
Some take the hard dusty route to the Mediterranean’s ancient sites. Christian Tyler approached them the hedonist’s way: cruising on a gulet along some of the most breathtaking coastline in the world.
For thousands of years man has enjoyed the succelence of the grape. But the fruit is not its only gift.
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