Hello, I’m Serhat Engul.
For nearly 10 years, I’ve been sharing my knowledge of Istanbul and my two decades of guiding experience through the Istanbul Clues website.
In this article, I’d like to introduce you to my new fable universe — a creative way to share Istanbul’s stories through imagination — and its leading characters: Alek (a seagull), Misi (a cat), and Rubi (a mouse).
I’ll also explain why I needed these fairytale characters to tell the story of Istanbul from every possible perspective. And beyond them, I’ll introduce another fictional character — Stavros, a man living in New York — and share how all these narratives together formed a trilogy of storytelling projects.
How and Why Did the New Project Come About?
For almost two decades, I have worked in Istanbul’s tourism industry—first in hotels, then as a guide—sharing the beauty of this timeless city with curious travelers from around the world. Along the way, I began documenting my insights and experiences on my blog, Istanbul Clues, where I’ve published dozens of articles exploring everything from Hagia Sophia’s mosaics to the winding alleys of Fener and Balat.
As the blog grew, I realized something. Despite my best efforts — adding personal reflections, choosing evocative images, crafting carefully researched articles — I was still bound by a certain format. Writing about history often meant following a familiar pattern: names, dates, battles, dynasties. Even when I told the stories in my own words, they sometimes felt trapped within the rigid outlines of encyclopedic narration.
I began to wonder: was there a different way to tell Istanbul’s story?
That question stayed with me for years, simmering quietly in the background. I longed to explore history more poetically, more freely — not just as a sequence of events, but as a living memory, full of mood, shadow, sound, and spirit. But how could I do that in a way that readers would still find engaging and accessible?
The answer, it turns out, came from the world of fables. So now let me introduce you to my timeless fable characters, Alek, Misi and Rubi.
Meet Alek, Misi and Rubi
I created Alek, Misi, and Rubi — three animal characters who could say the things I couldn’t. Alek is a seagull who glides above the domes and towers, watching the centuries unfold from the sky. Misi is a black-and-white cat who curls around marble fountains and ancient stairways, attuned to the city’s melancholy heartbeat. Rubi is a small grey mouse who slips into forgotten corners and palace walls, collecting the whispers of the past.
Together, they became my voice in another dimension — one that isn’t limited by time, geography, or logic.
Alek can witness the founding of Byzantium in the 7th century BCE and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, all from the same endless flight. Misi can sit beside an Ottoman scribe one moment and sleep beneath a Byzantine arch the next. Rubi can eavesdrop on emperors and servants alike, slipping through cracks in the floorboards of history.
With them, I could finally tell the kinds of stories I had always wanted to share: not cold lists of facts, but fables — imaginative, atmospheric, and rich with metaphor. Through them, I found a way to describe Istanbul not as a sequence of monuments, but as a city of memory, emotion, and myth.
About Istanbul Stories Website
Of course, these stories had to find a place somewhere else, not on Istanbul Clues, the website of local guide Serhat Engul, who has been sharing his knowledge in a formal style for years.
As a result, I thought about the domain name that would most evoke our stories about Istanbul, and thankfully, I found it available. Alek, Misi and Rubi will now be sharing their stories on our site called “Istanbul Stories”, and you can visit it by clicking the link below.
Here, you’ll find poetic narratives that blend historical truth with literary wonder, inspired by the timeless tradition of Aesop, La Fontaine, Italo Calvino, and Neil Gaiman. Each story is a doorway into a different layer of the city — one where animals speak, stones remember, and time itself becomes elastic.
Istanbul Stories is not a replacement for Istanbul Clues — it is a companion. Where one gives you the historical facts, the other offers the city’s dreams.
If you’ve ever felt that Istanbul has secrets it hasn’t told you yet, come meet Alek, Misi, and Rubi. They’ve been watching, waiting, and whispering for centuries.
You can read Alek’s, Misi’s and Rubi’s story inspired by the Hippodrome of Constantinople here:
👉 The Obelisk of Theodosius – Three Witnesses of a Stone
The Completing Piece of the Trilogy
However, even after softening existing themes like the Hippodrome of Constantinople in the fabled universe of Istanbul Stories and presenting stories such as Three Witnesses of a Stone: The Obelisk of Theodosius, I felt there was still something missing.
Why not tell the story of Constantinople between 330 and 1453 — the late antique and medieval period in which I specialize — through a human lens, much like the fictional novels that have inspired me over the years?
Authors I admire, such as Dean Koontz and Paulo Coelho, have created characters who transcend the physical boundaries of this world, exploring the depths of human psychology and spirituality, and writing novels that are both profound and enjoyable to read.
And yet, I still wanted to bridge the poetic and the human — the mythical and the real. Could I express my historical knowledge in a language similar to theirs? For a long time, the answer was no.
But with the advancement of technology and the support of artificial intelligence, this vision finally became possible. With the help of powerful AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini, I decided to add a third element to this narrative universe. Thus, the human–AI collaboration gave birth to the Byzantine Stories website and the character Stavros.
Now, within this new dimension, we can time-travel to any period of the Byzantine era — whether as a seagull (Alek) soaring above the city, a cat (Misi) wandering beneath its walls, a mouse (Rubi) listening from within the cracks, or as a human (Stavros) walking the streets and conversing with emperors themselves.
I now have an unlimited creative field with which to tell my stories, and I’m genuinely excited about it. From now on, we’ll have not only encyclopedic knowledge through Istanbul Clues, but also fabled characters who transcend time and space — and even a human who journeys through history in dreams.
You can read Stavros’s first dream, set in the year 811, here:
👉 Episode I – The Battle of Pliska
🌙 Three Websites, One Soul: Telling Istanbul’s Story
My journey to tell Istanbul’s story has led me to create a trilogy of websites — each revealing a different face of the same city.
- 🕯️ The Guide’s Voice – IstanbulClues.com:
Where history lives in detail. A guide’s insight into Istanbul’s monuments, culture, and Byzantine & Ottoman heritage. - 🐾 The Fable’s Magic – IstanbulStories.com:
Where a seagull, a cat, and a mouse tell the city’s dreams. A fable universe inspired by timeless storytelling. - 🕊️ The Human Echo – ByzantineStories.com
Where the human side of Byzantium comes alive through literary fiction — exploring the souls behind the stones.
Each tells a different story, yet all share the same heart: Istanbul.
Written by Serhat Engul
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