Izmir Turkiye and the call to prayer

It was 5AM in Izmir. I had arrived late in the night before, on my way to Ephesus to see the ancient ruins of a roman port city. The only room we could find was down an alley in a very scary part of town. the room had a back door that i couldn't lock and it led to some rather sketchy rooftops. It seemed like a setup to my un-trusting new york self, so i hid my credit cards and blockaded the door with all the furniture in the room and devised a desperate plan to smash a book shelf on any intruder's head as they tried to navigate the pile of stuff in between them and us. i had the key in the lock and knew which direction to turn it even in the dark, and told Amo to head straight out just in case.

I slept fitfully but well, occasionally a strange noise had me lurch forward out of bed, only to realize it was a cat, or a rooster scurrying around in the alley out back. i had no idea what was beyond the alley because in the late hour of arrival i was unable to see anything in the unlit streets beyond. but at 5AM, came the sudden and haunting tone of the Adhan. the call to prayer. it was still a foreign and startling phenomenon to my american ears, but i knew what it was. i opened the window to see the light coming up on the eastern horizon. it showed the silhouette of several minarets and winding dark streets and old ottoman buildings set into large foothills.

at around the same time and slightly offset came the same prayer, from different singers in different mosques in the immediate area. they kind of filled in each other's pauses and acted as a chorus of deep soul wrenching tones. needless to say, it was very moving moment for me. not only marking the end of a long tense night, but opening my vacationing agnostic eyes to a deep seated cultural spiritualism and love of religion that i had never really known before. i saw a cat stop walking across a roof and sit down to watch me, and down the street a rooster began to cuckoo loudly, as if trying to match the power of the broadcast. there was a dog barking and a cool breeze blowing in through the sheer window shade against my face.

i have felt the tug in my heart as a child reading the bible stories about jesus being crucified. i know the sense of awe and humility in pondering god. what god must be capable of, what he/she might think about me personally and what the consequences could be if any one of these religions are right about sin. i am agnostic, i don't know what happens after death but i am capable of grasping that there could be an afterlife, just as quickly as i can believe that there isn't one. i have read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and believed truly that someone can achieve an enlightenment where they suddenly understand everything. i have looked into a river as he did, and felt that the truth must be so simple, yet so infinitely fantastically impossible to fathom. I have felt the definite sense of leaving my body while deep in meditation and wondered if that meant that i had a soul, a part of infinity and separate from time. but i still don't know what any of my wandering experiences tell me.

what i do know is that this moment in Izmir was something special. it was, i guess, a small window into a large and foreign world. a huge intense religion that stems from one that i am familiar with. they believe in Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and of course, Gabriel. they believe in the total homage to god and really, the rest of it is just cultural. but the belief in one god, one purpose is the same. the overwhelming emotion and focused spirituality of this prayer echoing through the silent sleeping city proved this to me. i had just earlier looked upon the collection of religious artifacts in Topkali Palace in Istanbul and had made assumptions when, after seeing Moses' walking stick, and the golden arm of John the Baptist, i had gazed upon the arsenal of Muhammad. the man had three golden swords and a bow. my judeo-christian mind hadn't quite processed that a holy man could carry around weapons and still be holy. but again, that wasn't the point of the weapons, or the artifacts. it was just the remains of these men, who had loved one god, in a world that loved the elements individually. they had felt a different and maybe "higher" truth even when faced with death and worse. it's very moving, and this call to prayer, on this morning really caught me off guard and overwhelmed me.

then about 2 hours later, PKK blew up a car in the city and injured 19 soldiers. but that's a political battle, not one about god.