September 13 Into the Exotic

An Islamic Call to Prayer on Yom Kippur

Turkish Airlines, how exotic. Flying to Istanbul and expecting to feel a bit like crossing Gibraltar to Tangiers years ago. We fly in a roomy Airbus, and are served lunch on a two hour flight! We arrive and for the first time ever, we are looking for someone holding up a sign with our name and we spot him, a young man, and the sign says Marli Schwartz. We are whisked to a car, complete with a small Turkish rug, and forty five minutes later we arrive, near but not quite at our hotel. We are stuck close by in a traffic jam.

 

Our driver makes a quick call and then stops. The driver opens our door and the bellhop from our hotel magically appears, to carry our luggage and walk us to the hotel about a block away, no use waiting for traffic to clear, it could be while and there is an entire BIG city waiting to be explored.

As we register, we are served apple tea and the requisite Turkish Delight, juicy and pistachio laden.

We quickly dump our stuff and then, after a quick meeting with the concierge, we plan our day and head out.

Istanbul is sensory overload. You are accosted immediately with sights, sounds, smells and hawkers. Everyone has something to sell- Bosphorous cruises, pomegranate juice, tea, and every ticky-tacky souvenir you can imagine. And oh yes, rugs, rugs, rugs. Everyone wants to sell you a rug.  We engage in conversation with rugman #1 until Steve finally realizes the only way out of the conversation is to say we are traveling and have no home, we are vagabonds.  When rugman #2 strikes up a conversation using the same opening line of 'do you like rugs', Steve is sharper and just says " No!' I do not like rugs" We learn quick. 

We decide not to try to see too much since it is already 4PM, so we head down the main drag to the Blue Mosque.

As we walk, we hear the first of many calls to prayer. We know it will become a familiar sound over these next days. Since it is prayer time, we sit in the courtyard for twenty minutes, waiting, scarf in hand to cover my head, reading about the mosque and looking up at the dome and the semi domes.

We line up, take off our shoes and enter the mosque like everyone else and guess what the first thing we realize is - the entire mosque smells like feet! All these tourists in the heat of the summer taking their shoes off, phew! 

The famous blue tiles adorn the domes and the walls but very high up so it looks more like paint and less like tiles. The carpet stretches for what seems like miles but you can only imagine what it must sound like and look like filled with rows of men bowed in prayer. 

We head out and stumble upon a Korean exhibition promoting tourism for Turks. There are blocks of booths with information and beautiful Korean products, and some Turkish stuff thrown in too. We are just in time for a Korean dance show that starts out kind of surreal and then turns into hip hop dancing in skimpy clothes being viewed by Muslim women in head scarves and burkas.

 I realize that Turkey is going to be quite a contradiction. We take in the Haghia Sophia from the outside only, for now, and then head for dinner. 

A decent bottle of dry rose, a cold vegetable meze and a table right on a street full of lights and life. We compare travel notes with the next door table, a couple of Aussies on a six week holiday. We skip dessert, though judging by the pastry and sweets shops we walked by all day, we are probably making a big mistake.

We walk home, past many more hawkers and gawkers, tired and ready to plan for tomorrow. 

It is Yom Kippur. Though we are not fasting, nor sharing the day with family and friends, and I am not cooking for twenty five people we love and we miss, we are planning to rise early and head to Neve Shalom synagogue, where with special rabbinate permission and the showing of our passports, we will have a seat in the largest Sephardic temple in Istanbul. And we hope we will be lucky enough to be granted another year  of life and love and family and friends.

L'Shana Tova, to our friends and family and next year EVERYONE Is invited to our home for break fast!!!!