Antiquity outside my window

Outside the window of Bilgi dorm, the tips of a mosque and its minarets are illuminated by a dull yellow light. These lights illuminate the city, casting antiquity and arousing a surreal feeling in my stomach. Just behind the mosque, I can barely make out shadows of stone buildings on a hill, with specks of the same yellow light. Below the window several stories is a tin roof, worn and patched, and below that, is a hole in the ground with a few thin boards thrown carelessly over it.

The alley way three stories down, illuminated by a single warm orange-hued light, is scattered with old chairs and rolled up rugs tossed in the corners. A few stories above, in the black of the night, a window shines with a blue tintd cold white light. The figures capped white gowns and white hats, rolls and pounds on a white lump of dough.

The outer layer of concrete sheds into an inner layer of bricks. Every wall here reflects the unkind aging of the city and dark marks of weather and pollution.

The city is calm, but alive at 3 in the morning. Not with flashing lights like Vegas, or with clicking of wine glasses like Italy, and not with a rumbling base of a techno beat like the beach bars along the Spree. The night is cool, and perhaps that is the reason why there are so many still out.
Along the bridge men and boys fish, their long slim poles arch over the dark still water. Beneath the bridge, a long line of colorful draperies flow with the morning breeze as women and men sit, chatting and sipping chai out of thin-waisted glasses. Old men blow smoke out of the colorful water pipes and brush their game pieces back and forth on the green velvet table top.

Would I be too Western or too cliché in feeling that I have stumbled upon an exotic jewel that is the orient?