Chapters 34 through 37 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 34, To Be Unhappy Is to Hate Oneself and One's City, begins with the author noting that sometimes one's city can look like an alien place. He muses that the city, like his soul, is becoming empty. He doesn't like spring afternoons because the sun illuminates the poverty, disorder and failure all around him. The city is filled with unattractive apartment buildings and he feels that people are looking at him with hatred, and he says they are right to feel that way. He hates everything he sees in the streets and wants to return to his own four walls. The number of English and French words on signs says that the city is moving westward, but it also can't honor its own tradition so everything seems half formed. As he matured, he has become convinced that Istanbul is...