ORHAN PAMUK’S ISTANBUL -- 29

NEW YORK TIMES WORDS/STEVE WRIGHT IMAGES

He seemed to tense up slightly as we left the mosque and wandered into one of Istanbul’s hard-core Sunni neighborhoods. 

“We could be in a different country,” he said in a soft voice.

Salafist men with long beards and skullcaps sat on benches in tidy plazas; women in black abayas walked with their children down a cobblestone street past a madrassa, an Islamic school.

-Joshua Hammer