Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk wrote in his memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City, “it was in Cihangir (where we too would move as our fortunes dwindled) that I first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives – a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what – but an archipelago of neighborhoods in which everyone knew one another.” Pamuk’s observation rings true today. Cihangir has long been a destination for artists and writers, but at the neighborhood’s heart is a community: a village surrounded by a megacity. Norm Coffee is one piece of that community….
