Janet Haven

I've been in Istanbul for the past week (again!), this time at an OSI information program coordinator's meeting. My colleagues from Soros foundations across the former Soviet Union and Africa joined the international staff for several days of discussions. And as the meeting wound down at two this afternoon, a total eclipse of the sun crossed Turkey. Istanbul was not in the one hundred percent path of the eclipse. What we got, at about 87% eclipsed, were a good fifteen minutes of the sort of watery, pale sunlight I associate with swimming along the bottom of the pool holding my breath, or dawn in the middle of Nebraska.

I and a number of my colleagues stood on the roof terrace of the Hotel Armada in Sultanahmet to watch the eclipse. Not a bad spot: looking in one direction we could see the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia; in the other direction, the Bosphorus. We were joined on the roof by a crowd of Turkish hotel guests and staff, some of whom got very excited that the shadow cast by the sun during the height of the eclipse looked remarkably like the image on the Turkish flag (right). More enthusiastic observers starting pulling out pens and pencils to add a drawn star next to the sun's shadow, which was being projected onto a piece of paper in the center of the crowd. Soon enough, several stars had been added to the paper, and by reflecting the sun's shadow just right, the image stopped being just an eclipse, and also became a naturally appearing Turkish flag. It's not just beauty that's in the eye of the beholder, after all.