On the Greek island of Rhodes, I skipped the beach to visit a pasha's library

On the Greek island of Rhodes, I skipped the beach to visit a pasha's library Submitted by Sean Mathews on Tue, 05/12/2026 - 10:09 Nestled in the back streets of Rhodes is an Ottoman library administered by the same family for seven generations The book room of the Hafiz Ahmed Agha Library on the island of Rhodes, Greece, is pictured on 4 April 2026 (Sean Mathews/MEE) Off "I'd be doing this even if you weren't here," Tarik Tuten, a local resident, tells me. "I walk for hours on Rhodes. It's my habit," he adds, as his polite, Turkish-accented English cuts through the quiet alley paved in sea pebbles. It's early spring, and the tourists have yet to fully descend on Rhodes. Besides the stray cats, we are alone. The sky is leaden and there is just a faint pit-pat of rain. But we are protected overhead by sachnisi, those jutting, second-storey windows that whisper Levantine refinement; dormant bougainvillaeas slither up to the wooden shutters like the coils of a hookah. At this time of year, Rhodes' back alleys have a whiff of huzun,   that delectable melancholy which haunts Orhan Pamuk’s novels and seems to go with decaying Levantine cities like ouzo and meze. Huzun is a precious commodity in today's eastern Mediterranean, divided as it is between coastlines turned into war zones or soaking up the wealth of the footloose rich. Neither war nor Dubaisation leaves much space for huzun. Tuten knows these alleys like the back of his hand. One minute, he is guiding me through untended gardens in the old Jewish quarter. Next, he is pointing out a Byzantine church hidden behind oleanders and cypresses. But I have come to Rhodes, the most southeastern of Gree...

Original source: Middle East Eye