Barbers and bombs

Travel stimulates the mind. And no place is more revivifying than one we have never been to.

THE barber shop was in a nondescript corner lot in Istanbul's Kariye district, minutes from the fifth-century Theodosius walls and the Kariye Museum. With only enough room for two large, old-fashioned barber's chairs, waiting customers had to make do with a sunken sofa and some skeletal chairs.