Enjoying the beauty of the Topkapi palace together with Nobel laureate John Nash
On our second day in Istanbul, we visited the Topkapi palace and shared our tour of the harem with John Nash, the Nobel laureate featured in the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’. He was accompanied by two guides, one Turkish and one American, and was being chased by five camera teams.
In the Sacred Safekeeping Rooms, in the one room where the muezzin started his calls to prayer just when we were there, we saw some hairs from the beard of Mohamed. By the beard of Mohamed!
Walking around the palace, I realized that, in my imagination, the palace had been much bigger and even grander.
At the Topkapi palace, camera crews were following around some bigwig. Asking around, the bigwig turned out to be none other than John Nash. After sharing a tour of the Harem of the Topkapi palace with him, John and I contemplated the beauty of this historically important venue together.