Constantinople, V. 2 (of 2)

Edmondo De Amicis arrived in Constantinople expecting the suppressed women of Western fantasy. What he found surprised him. In this second volume of his landmark travel account, the Italian observer documents a city where women in yashmac and ferajeh move through public space with a freedom that confounds every European assumption. They bargain in the bazaars, flirt playfully beneath their veils, and navigate the strict codes of Ottoman modesty with an agility that De Amicis finds both admirable and puzzling. Through his keen Italian eyes, we witness the paradoxes of a society where strict seclusion coexists with surprising autonomy, where the ferajeh is both garment and armor, constraint and disguise. This is Constantinople at its fin de siècle, the ancient capital teetering between tradition and the modern world, captured in prose that is part journalism, part poetry, and wholly beguiling. For readers who crave the sensory richness of vanished worlds, De Amicis offers Constantinople in full color: its sounds, its smells, its secret negotiations between the sexes.