Dolphins on the Bosphorus

 "Do you want to sit on the Asian or the European side?"

That was the question my host asked me as we boarded her daily commuter ferry heading towards the centre of old Istanbul. There can't be too many urban transport routes where this is a relevant question. Continent-spanning cities are at a premium. Atyaru, Kazakhstan, located at the point where the Ural River meets the Caspian Sea, has a fair claim with the traffic signposts on its major motorway offering 'Europe/Asia' as alternative off-ramps. Panama City could make an argument based on a notional cut-off point between the North and South American continental masses. Reykjavik has a tentative geological claim in that it all but straddles the Atlantic tectonic plates that bind and divide Europe and North America. Port Said and Suez act as twin stitches holding Africa together with Asia across the man-made incision of the Suez Canal. The Straits of Hercules are too wide and turbulent to have allowed a joint Afro-European settlement to have developed on either side - Atlantis maybe but no Heraclinople or Gibstanbul?

No, the question applies uniquely to Istanbul. The ferry pilot tacks across the swirling currents of the Bosphorus navigating the ancient waterway with deceptive ease. Under our bows at each station, the waters churn and drag fiercely - the tides of history tugging us deeper into the heart of the city. From the Anatolian shores come the sweet, balmy waters of Asia, above the skyline of Thrace rise the competing spires of Europe. Istanbul is both mother and father to a nation.

We pass the narrowest point in the straits where Sultan Mehmet II ordered a chain link blockade to be strung from his hastily constructed M-shaped fortress in order to strangle Constantinople before entering it in 1453. Today the Fatih Sultan Mehmet suspension bridge connects the continents high above us. Migratory seabirds meeuw and swoop down from its steel cradle.

 "If we are very lucky, we may see dolphins," my host peers over the European starboard side of the boat where we have chosen to sit this morning, promising ourselves an Asian side ride on the way home. I stare intently at the roiling waters willing these graceful, intelligent creatures into sight. They are easy shapes to conjure with in the mind's eye. But none appear as we approach the Ataturk Bridge.

I suppose that if you are a dolphin in the Bosphorus, you don't have to choose between continents, between good bank or bad bank, left wing or right wing, between rival religions or even between the secular and the divine. There's just fish for tea and the freedom of the sea that made the world.