In Succession

When I, as a high school student, was strolling along the Great Road of Beyond the Tunnel in Konstantinopolis, the small metro of three minutes which brought together the Beyond with Galata, toward Taxim – which was the central plaza of the day – I could hear six languages in total: Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Italian, French and Sephardic Hebrew. Every day I would listen to the music of multiple languages. We supposed – and still do – that Konstantinopolis and Alexandria were two of the biggest centres of Hellenism; but the two great cities were the epicentre of cosmopolitanism, which could rival even the biggest European cities of the same era.