When Ginger wrote her grant application for her sabbatical, walking was the primary metaphor. She talked about how important walking had been in her life and how she wanted to walk in the steps of Paul through Greece and Turkey. She wrote as well as she walks and the Lilly Endowment let us take this trip. One of the choices we made as we planned was to schedule a free day every so often to give us time to rest, to reflect, and to walk. Yesterday was such a day.

I got up early and, while Ginger was getting ready, walked a few blocks into the center of town to take pictures of the storks nesting on top of the aqueduct. (The rundown building in this picture is built between two of the aqueduct’s pillars.) On my way back, I stepped into a shop called Moon Light and met Julia, the only female shop owner in Selcuk. She greeted me and said,
“I have good prices and I don’t have any cousins who sell carpets.” We both laughed and continued our conversation. I bought a small copper pot used to make Turkish coffee and she told me I had brought her luck because I was her first customer and had bought something quickly. Then she asked a question:

“Is your wife feminist lady?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then she will like article written about me by American feminist magazine.” She was quite proud of her accomplishments, as well she should have been.

I knew I had to bring Ginger back to the shop, so I went back to the hotel and got her. Before we went to the shop we walked up the hill behind our hotel to the ruins of the Basilica of St. John, a church built over the grave of John, the apostle. Below the church we could see the rooftops of the village; above the church, the walls of the ancient acropolis. Even in ruins, we could see the lines of what must have been a majestic structure. The stones we saw were actually the second church built on the site, both of which were destroyed by earthquakes. Just in front of what once was the altar, there was a large marble slab with four columns and a small lettered cube marking it as John’s tomb. The location has been marked since the second century. We were the only two people at the site for a good bit of time. It was deeply moving.

When we got back to town, Julia showed us all kinds of wonderful stuff, served us tea, and enjoyed asking Ginger questions about being a woman and a minister. From there we walked the three blocks to the local bus station to take a minibus ride to Sirince (Sheer EEN jay), a small mountain village we heatd about from some folks at dinner last night. The village was historically Greek, but was vacated in 1924 when the Turkish Greeks were repatriated to Greece and the Turks in Greece were sent back to Turkey. The Greek Turks then inhabited the village and continued the traditions of producing olive oil and wine. They make wine from grapes and fruit (more on that later).

On the bus we struck up a conversation with Sedet, who owns the Zeus Pension and Restaurant in Sirince. He gave us a card and invited us to stop by. The eight kilometer ride cut back and forth up the side of the mountain until we came to the quaint little village. Sedet got off at his place and we rode into the village center. It was lunch time, so we wandered down a couple of the narrow streets, looking in the little shops, until we came to a café that looked like a good place for a snack. Ginger said it would be a good idea to get something small so we could eat our way back to Sedet’s place.

Our server was a wonderful grey-haired man who, like everyone else we have met in Turkey, was incredibly hospitable. Ginger ordered the chicken shish kebap she has had at most every meal and our server suggested I come over and look at the mezes (appetizers) and make my own choices. So much for getting something small. I chose sautéed eggplant, peppers and tomatoes; a chili relish I’m still trying to figure out how to describe; cheese-stuffed mushrooms; and a small cheese pie, which was a filo triangle filled with a mild cheese, fresh dill, and scallions. I thought I was going to get one of everything. I got enough to feed us both well. And then, I found out, I had also ordered a mixed grill, which came with kofte (Turkish meatballs) and lamb cooked three ways. Needless to say, we didn’t do a whole lot more snacking.

We walked back through the small bazaar and then turned up one of the tiny residential lanes and wandered around the village until we came out, of all places, at Sedet’s place. He was sitting at a table reading the paper and drinking tea. He gave us a table with an incredible view of both the village and the valley below and sat down with us. We had a wonderful time talking and I had a wonderful time sampling his Turkish coffee and homemade baklava with dondurma, which is Turkish for ice cream (and the one Turkish word indelibly placed in my memory). From our table, we moved to a small counter where we sampled some of the various wines from the village: strawberry, blackberry, mulberry, melon, sour cherry, and red grape. They were small samples – really. The guy who served the wine was convinced I was Turkish.

“Go home and ask your family,” he said. “Perhaps they’ve forgotten to tell you.”

We rode back down the mountain and took a short nap before we went for a walk in earnest. We started down the main road, which we have come to know well, and then turned on the road that leads to Ephesus, which is about three kilometers away. We found a wonderful tree-lined walkway that was filled with all sorts of folks walking and riding bicycles. The sun was hanging low in the sky and the air was nice and cool. It was a perfect spring evening. On our right were rows and rows of olive trees; on the left were the ruins of the ancient city scattered on the hillside. The rich agricultural land on which we were walking would have been the harbor into which Paul or John or Mary might have sailed. We turned around when we got to the gates of Ephesus and walked back to our hotel, ready for dinner.

Mehmet waited on us again tonight and he brought us the olive oil he promised – three kilos of it. It’s incredible. I told him people in the States were going to think I was crazy when I came back to Turkey in a couple of months just because I’d run out of olive oil. Once folks back home taste the oil, I’ll have no trouble putting my own group tour together. After dinner, and saying our grateful goodbyes to Mehmet, we came back to the room. Through our open window we could hear festive music coming from somewhere and a lot of crowd noise, so I went down to the desk to ask what was going on. The clerk told me it was a spring festival.

“Is it OK for us to walk down there?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “They would love for you to go.”

So we did. We walked with the masses about three blocks to a nearby park which was packed with several hundred people. At one end was a stage with big speakers blaring out music, some guys banging on big drums, and a host of girls wearing sparkling beaded outfits and doing Gypsy dances. At the other end of the park were several small bonfires. We walked over to the fires to find people, young and old, running and jumping through them. We found a small one and took our turn. Part of Ginger’s family heritage is Gypsy, so both the dances and the fire-jumping were things she had heard about from her grandmother. Our walk to the park was a walk into deep and meaningful memory as well.

We walked home under the moon, below the old city walls, and surrounded by the crowds and the beautiful sights, sounds, and smells of the abandon that flourishes within a celebrating community. We have walked today in the footsteps of our faith, in the heritage of our history, in the delight of discovery, all the time wading in the deep, deep river that is our common humanity. Faith, says Frederick Buechner, is a journey without maps. Ah, but with all these traveling companions, it’s not so hard to find our way.

Peace,
Milton

In the middle of Selcuk are the remains of a Roman aqueduct. Storks come to nest on top of them every April and May. We could hear — and barely see — the new baby storks (storklets?) today.

These pictures are for Amy, who likes pictures of birds from other places.

Peace,
Milton

Yesterday was a day of familiar and friendly faces, even in a foreign land. Cam, Rachel, Adam, and Joel were all on our bus today, as were Keith and Sandra, an Australian couple staying in our hotel. We all signed up for the tour to Pamukkale and Hieropolis, just as we had gone to Ephesus together the day before, so we were looking forward to seeing one another. The biggest contingent of the rest of the people on our bus was made up of three generations of an Indian family with whom we had shared a boat ride on our tour along the Bosphorus in Istanbul a couple of days ago. We recognized each other as well. Here, in a country foreign to us all, we, who came from four different countries, traveled as companions. By the end of the trip, we knew we would all be headed in different directions. But we were together for the day.

Hieropolis and Pamukkale are a three hour drive from Selcuk, so we had plenty of time to talk, read, and sleep a little, too. We wound through the Anatolian countryside, through the heart of the agricultural area, past olive trees, citrus groves, and strawberry fields. Turkey is still a land of family farmers, rather than giant corporate farms. As we drove, Aysha (who was also with us yesterday) filled out heads with historical, geographical, and cultural information. We also stopped for tea along the way, of course.

Our first stop was the largest necropolis – “city of the dead” or cemetery – in Turkey. Only a small portion of it has been excavated; much of it has been broken and looted by shepherds in the area over the years. The graves stood as markers to more than the people who had been buried there. They were scattered across what is now a beautiful hillside, stones that have lasted far longer than the people who stacked them. Though there are some inscriptions in ancient Greek and Latin, most of the graves are anonymous monuments, pointing to little more than the fact that a dead person was laid to rest there. In the cracks of the stones, life is breaking through in the form of wild flowers and lush green grass. The cemetery next to our church in Marshfield tells the same story with newer graves that still bear the names. If life is a sentence, these stones are the final punctuation.

We moved on up the hill to Hieropolis where the stones were stacked a bit differently. The path up to the arena let us enter at the top of it, which gave us an incredible view of the valley below. Farther up the path stood two walls that were all that was left of a church built to honor Phillip, one of the disciples, who was said to have been martyred on that hill. From there we could see stacks of stones in various places all down the mountainside that have yet to tell their stories; only three percent of the site has been excavated.

Back down near where we got off the bus was a thermal pool, fed by the hot springs in the area, that the citizens of Hieropolis even used. Cleopatra was said to have swum in the pool; we didn’t because they wanted fifteen dollars for the privilege. Even though it was raining lightly – it rained all day, we walked farther down to the terraces for which Parmukkale is famous. We didn’t come all this way to miss the sights because we didn’t want to get wet. As the hot water cascaded down the hillside and evaporated over the years, it left calcium deposits that created terraces and pools. Most of them are dry because of earlier mismanagement by the Turkish tourism industry, but the ones that are left are incredible. It’s a landscape unlike any other I have seen.

Adam and Joel headed down the hill into the village to catch the bus to take them on the next leg of their journey before we got to tell them goodbye. I was sad about that. We dropped Cam and Rachel off in the town of Pamukkale where they are going to hang out for a few days – and got to wish them well — and then we started back to Selcuk. In conversations around the terraces, we talked with the Indian family about our mutual connection to Kenya. Keith, Sandra, and I talked most of the way home about all sorts of things. We said goodbye to Aysha when we got to our hotel, went up to the room to change into some dry clothes, and then went back down for dinner.

I haven’t gotten to talk about food as much as I would like so far. (I’m afraid you’ll have to wait on recipes until I get home.) The food here at the Hotel Kalehan is worth talking about. So is our server, Mehmet. He has waited on us both nights and he has been great, especially because of his knowledge of what’s on the plate and how it has been prepared. He is a gentle and kind man who is thoughtful and unassuming and full of knowledge and conversation. He has also been willing to endure my questions about everything he has brought to our table. Last night the menu was vegetable soup, cheese rolls, beef with eggplant puree, and chocolate cake with ice cream (all for $16). With every course I made some sort of inquiry and he answered everything.

I need to back up a step. The first thing that has greeted us each night is fresh bread with a side of herbed olive oil. Aysha told us this is the olive oil producing region of Turkey, so we expected the oil to be good, but the stuff last night was amazing. We asked Mehmet and found out that he is an olive grower and presses the oil the hotel uses himself. (Needless to say, some of it is coming home with us.) He told us his family has grown olives for years, but he just bought an olive farm – 220 trees – and is now doing it himself. He went on to tell of the restaurant’s commitment to buy only fresh organic produce (you should taste the tomatoes) and make everything fresh everyday. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen here in Selcuk, but I’m going to tell you to come here mostly to have dinner.

When we got up from the table, Mehmet asked, “Are you here tomorrow night?”

Yes was our answer. We will be the last of our impromptu band to leave this little town for our next adventure. But we have one more night for one more great dinner, for a couple of hundred questions about Turkish food, and for one last encounter with a friendly face who has made our meals richer by being there.

Peace,
Milton

I never thought I would start a blog entry by quoting the Jackon Five, but “one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl.” Aysha, our guide for our tour of the ruins at Ephesus, or Efes to the Turks, was wonderful. So was our tour group. This time the whole group was English speaking, but just as diverse coming from Australia, England, Malaysia, and the US (us). We were a smaller group, too – only ten. Our trip today included Ephesus, the Temple of Artemis, and the site of the house where Mary, Jesus’ mother, lived out the last years of her life.

Diversity comes in many packages. Our tour group in Greece was all from North America, yet covered a wide theological spectrum. Our first group in Istanbul was twenty-two people from ten or eleven countries; we hardly shared language in common, which made it difficult to find out if we shared much else. Our group yesterday was all English speaking and incredibly diverse in age, outlook, and world view. Somehow we seemed to get along with each other best of all. The fun part is eight of us are on the same tour today, as is Aisha. We all seemed quite pleased to find that out.

I didn’t expect what we found when we got to Ephesus. Of all the sights we have visited, this was by far the largest and the one that fed our imaginations the most. We wandered through the ruins for over two hours as Aisha told us about the different incarnations of the city dating back for several centuries BCE. Most of the ruins that have been excavated are Greek and Roman. Several of the main streets have been restored. The site was crawling with visitors, so walking down the marble roads left me feeling as though I had a taste of what it might have been like when Paul walked the same streets, bumping shoulders with others traveling the same path.

The city was a cultural crossroads for as long as it existed, drawing visitors, merchants, and conquering armies from every direction. There were temples to various gods, both Greek and Roman, the biggest of which was the Temple of Artemis, the goddess of fertility, which was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. During the two or three years that Paul lived and worked in the city, it was vibrantly pagan. In fact, the silver merchants who made most of their income because of the worship of Artemis, were the ones who ran him out of town as a fledgling church began to take hold. Some time later, he wrote back to the young congregation with words that are some of my favorite in his letters:

I wonder what it felt to know the dimensions of the Temple of Artemis, with its multiple rows of columns, each one ninety feet tall, and then to read Paul’s prayer that they might have some sense of the unfathomable dimensions of Jesus’ love for them. However tall the buildings, however deep the wounds of persecution, however wide the Roman Empire, however long the wait for the pain of life to ease, Christ’s love exceeded those measurements. I can only imagine they read the letter over and over again.

As the first century turned into the second, and Christianity took a strong hold on the city despite everyone else’s efforts, John, the apostle, and Mary, Jesus’ mother, lived in Ephesus. Some of the materials we have suggest John might have written his gospel from here. He returned to the city after his exile from Patmos and died here. We are going to see his tomb in the next couple of days. We did go to the site where Mary’s house was to have been. It was a wonderfully peaceful place on the top of a hill overlooking the old city. There is now a small chapel built on the ruins of the foundation of what is believed to have been her home. We learned that Pope Paul visited the site in 1967 and declared it holy so that Catholic pilgrims come here every August 15. No one seemed to know why the Pope picked August 15. On the May 3, the area was sparsely populated, which gave us time to walk, reflect, and enjoy the beautiful serenity we found there.

The “us” I’m talking about was Ginger, me, and two guys from England, Adam and Joel. The others chose to go to the museum. The two guys left England several weeks ago with a plan to travel, some money in their pockets, and a promise to their girlfriends to be back by the end of the year. They have tromped through Europe, are headed from here around the Black Sea to Russia, and then across Mongolia to China. They have a skeleton itinerary as they are making things up as they go. They already have more stories than they will ever be able to tell. Another pair, Cam and Rachel, are from Australia and are doing much the same thing. Part of the way they are financing their trip is to get jobs when they start to run out of money. They don’t have anyone expecting them back anytime soon, so they have no idea how long they are going to be gone. They told us today they had gotten jobs at the hostel here in Selcuk and are going to hang around a couple of months.

I imagine Paul traveled with much the same kind of itinerary; he never planned to live in Ephesus for three years. He got here and there was stuff to do and he could make a living while he was here. Then he was off to the next place, so he could discover where he would go after that. The ruins and the stories of our temporary traveling companions made Paul more real. I can see where he walked. I can see what he wrote. I can see how he traveled. All together, it makes for quite a view.

Peace,
Milton

We knew we had a tour today, we just didn’t know where we were going.

When I planned the trip with the help of Tovi from Kirkit Travel, he made some suggestions about tours and, after checking out the links he sent, I signed us up. That was several weeks ago. All I knew, looking our voucher, was we were going on the “Cosmopolitan Istanbul” half day tour. When we got downstairs to meet whomever was going to pick us up, we had two pleasant surprises: we had signed up for a private tour and we were going to visit Greek, Jewish, and Turkish neighborhoods and points of interest. We climbed in the van and off we went.

Our first stop was the Eyup Sultan Camii, or the Mosque of the Great Sultan, who was the standard bearer for the Prophet Mohammed. Across the courtyard from the mosque is the tomb of the Sultan; both sites are significant to Turkish Muslims. Our guide, Gulden (pronounced GOOL-dan) was a lovely person and a wonderful source of information. She was also delighted to talk about her faith and her heritage as a Muslim. Part of the reason she took us to this mosque was because it was off the beaten tourist path and in a more traditional Muslim neighborhood. As we stood in the back of the mosque, the main floor filled with men coming to pray. The sense of reverence was quite different from the Blue Mosque where the tourists far outnumbered the worshippers.

One of the most intriguing things about the mosque was this sign posted outside of the entrance to the tomb. Gulden translated it for us. It said something to the effect of “Don’t pray to the dead Sultan; you can only pray for him. No candles. No flowers. No strings or ribbons. No pieces of paper with messages. Don’t ask the Sultan to do anything for you. This is forbidden in our religion. You can only pray to Allah.” When we went inside, a number of people were kneeling or sitting around the walls. Some were reading out loud, though softly; others were praying. I wondered if they had read the sign. Most seemed determined to do or pray whatever they wanted, or at least that’s the way it felt to me.

From there we went to the Chora Church (The Church of the Savior Outside the City Walls), which is now the Kayrie Museum. This church was out of the way, even during the Fourth Crusade when the Crusaders sacked Constantinople, so it was not raided or damaged. Though the Ottomans plastered over the mosaics and turned it into a mosque, they did not destroy the artwork. The Turkish Repubilc uncovered the mosaics and turned the church into the Kayrie Museum. Gulden did a wonderful job showing us how the mosaics on one hall told the life of Mary and those on the other hall followed the events in Jesus’ life. Thus my next surprise: the life story of Mary, as it was told in these scenes, was one I had never heard. There were images of Gabriel’s annunciation of Mary’s birth to Ann, her mother; of various signs from Mary’s childhood; and of several other events that made her border on divinity. So much for being a lowly peasant girl.

Our next stop was the traditionally Jewish neighborhood of the Old City (the part inside the city walls from the sixteenth century). Up until the last few years, Turkish, Greek, and Jewish neighborhoods connected to one another quite well. The neighborhoods are still there, but many of the Greeks and Jews have relocated to the northern part of the European side of Istanbul and these neighborhoods are mostly poor and a bit rundown. There are still some synagogues there, but because of bombings in 2003 security is extremely tight: you have to make a specific appointment that has to be approved by the rabbi in order to visit them. We didn’t have such a connection, so we walked a bit and ended up at the Orthodox Patriarchy in the adjacent Greek neighborhood and visited the church there, which is still active. Inside was yet another surprise: the relics (bones) of St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory Nyziansus are ensconced there. Gulden said they were returned (from Britain, I think) about two years ago. Both are significant early theologians and names I have become even more familiar with as I have learned to write icons and learned more about Orthodoxy.

We said our goodbyes to Gulden about one-thirty and spent the afternoon roaming around on our own. We crossed the street and entered the Basilica Cistern, built by the Romans. We had no idea what we were going to see. I was expecting the equivalent of a big well. What I found was a huge underground cavern supported by beautiful Roman columns (the whole thing was twelve rows of twenty eight columns, each twenty seven feet high). They were playing wonderfully atmospheric music as we walked the wooden platforms through the cistern. Once again, I was surprised. When we came out we were hungry, so we stopped at the first restaurant we came to, which was a tourist trap and surprised us with how much they wanted for their food. We then wandered through the Grand Bazaar, a marketplace dating back centuries – and also a tourist trap — that stretches for blocks and has grown and morphed to presently house over four thousand little shops, all of whom have the best prices and, as one of them said, will be happy to help you spend your money. The instructions the guides give are to ignore the barkers and salespeople. If you act like they are not there, they will leave you alone after a bit. Ignore them long enough and you become numb to their presence.

We got out of there quickly, after feeling as though we had gotten a taste of what it was like, and found our way to Cidgem Pastanasi, a bakery and pastry shop recommended by the folks at Lonely Planet. We sat at a sidewalk table and I had some of the best baklava I have ever tasted. My senses were restored.

While we sat at our sidewalk table, the calls to prayer began and, as with every other time we have had a chance to watch people respond, no one stopped or changed what they were doing to pray or even acknowledge the calls were going out. The haunting chants appear to be little more than white noise. Yet, another surprise, I suppose, and a disappointing one. Is it so easy to fill our lives with noise that God’s voice becomes just another in the cacophonous chorus? (Did that really need to be a question?)

We decided to start back to the streets around our hotel, which are in a little bit more economical section and inhabited by both Turks and tourists living on a budget. We bought things in two shops where the shopkeepers were not hard sellers and the prices were fair (another surprise) and ended up for dinner at Doy Doy (another Lonely Planet suggestion and two blocks from our hotel) where we both ate for less than what it cost to feed one of us at lunch. By the time we finished dinner and began walking home, the calls to prayer were pealing out once more. Gulden talked about the origin of the prayers five times a day, accompanied by ritual cleansing and body positions as one prays, coming out of life in the desert. The washing of the hands, feet, head, ears, and neck three times before praying would have refreshed the desert traveler; the prayer positions would have served as stretching exercises: the practice of prayer was a way to stay healthy in more ways than one. Here, far away from the desert, few seemed willing to stretch their muscles, both physical and spiritual.

For all of the day’s surprises, what we noticed most was not new to us or new to the world. “Earth’s crammed with heaven,” wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “And every common bush afire with God; And only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”

She’s right, you know; I saw her words become flesh right before my eyes.

Peace,
Milton

Our first full day in Istanbul has come to a close.

We arrived yesterday evening, landing on the eastern edge of Europe to be met by Onal, our host from Kirkit Travel, with whom we have only communicated by email to this point. It was nice to know that someone who knew our name really was there to pick us up from the airport. We we teaken to the Tashkonak Hotel, which is within walking distance of the Blue Mosque, as well as in singing distance of it and several others; even in a short time, we have become accustomed to hearing the Muslim calls to prayer beaming out from the minarets five times a day. Since Istanbul has 3,200 mosques (and the population is 94% Muslim), the wonderfully melodic calls stack on top of each other in serendipitous harmony as their different songs and styles float across the city.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Istanbul is city of 14 million people. As I said, 94% of them are Muslim. Three and a half percent are Christians (157 churches) and one half of a percent of the population is Jewish (with twenty-two synagogues). Can you tell I paid attention on the tour? Our tour guide, Alsi, took us to the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome, the Aya Sophia, lunch along the water, the Sulemanni Mosque, and the Topkapi Palace, all the while filling our heads with facts and stories, which run deep in this place.

For her, history began with the founding of Constantinople in the late fourth century. Constantine built a city and named it after himself. She told it as though nothing significant had happened here before that. Yet, the Greeks had had a city here – Byzantium – centuries before Christ; the Romans had been here, too. But Turkish history seems to work hard to leave the Greeks out of as much as they can; the Greeks are happy to return the favor, still refusing to call Constantinople by the Turkish name it has had for almost a century: Istanbul.

No matter who we are, when it comes to history we tell the story the way we need to hear it – or perhaps the way we wish it had been – which then allows us to see the present the way we want it to be as well.

The two mosques were beautiful and quite active with both tourists and worshippers. We all had to take off our shoes, but those of us who came to look were limited in the parts of building where we could go. At Suleman’s Mosque, we saw where the men wash themselves before they pray to purify their hearts in prayer so both bocy and soul be clean. Aya Sophia began as an Orthodox church, was converted to a Catholic church after the Crusaders sacked Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (they were supposed to go to Egypt but didn’t get that far, so they wasted this city instead), remaining so for about fifty years until becoming Orthodox again, only to becoming a mosque when the Muslims conquered the city. One of the rulers who followed made it into a museum, so it is the one building we saw where both Christian and Islamic symbols of worship exist side by side, though no official worship takes place in the building. I found a sort of strange comfort and hope in seeing the images side by side.

At one point along the way, our group got to go around the circle and tell where we were from. It was then I realized that this is the first time I have been in a tourist city where the majority of the tourists are not American. We had twenty five people on our bus with people from Croatia, Serbia, Iran, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Mexico, Germany, Romania, Portugal, and Pakistan. Ginger and I were the only Americans. I’ve never thought about where Croatians and Serbs go on vacation before.

We ate lunch with Sohail, a Pakistani banker, who was a very pleasant and gentle man. He lived in the US for ten years and went to the University of Chicago. His wife, I found out, grew up in Lusaka, Zambia and went to the same school I had attended when I lived there (though several years after me) . He had a deep love for his country and couldn’t say enough about how much we would enjoy it if we were to go there. He and his wife had been in the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center just weeks before September 11, 2001; he spoke with fondness about their time there and with sadness about the attacks.

We talked about the differences in how governments act and how the people they supposedly represent actually feel. None of us felt particularly well represented by our leaders. They are retelling history, or at least repackaging it, to fit where they need it to fit so they can convince us what they say is the way things really are, the primary message being, “Be afraid; be very afraid.”

Why do we settle for that?

When we came out of the Sulemanni Mosque, I asked the guy from Iran how the mosques we had seen compared to the ones in his country. He told me very energetically how much larger and more beautiful the mosques were in Iran, going into significant detail. Then he said, “I am not Muslim; I’m Christian. But the mosques are beautiful.”

Iran is 97% Muslim and I got to talk to an Irani Christian who was in Istanbul on vacation. Even as our governments sling ultimatums, we were walking the cobblestones streets trying to understand each other.

I know the diplomatic problems of the world won’t be solved by a day long tour on a bus. I know fuzzy little anecdotes about multicultural munch outs are not necessarily substantive. I know there’s a lot of crap going on out there that makes it easy to choose to be frightened. I also know I don’t want fear to get the last word.

When we left the palace, the bus turned down a narrow little street to begin dropping us off at our hotels. From the first narrow street, he turned down a smaller one, cutting the corner closely. When the left rear tires cut across the curb and manhole cover, the pavement gave way and the back wheels dropped into the hole. We were stuck. We all got off the bus so another one could take us to our various lodgings. Ginger and I were close enough to the Tashkonak to walk, which also afforded us the chance to find the restaurant where we wanted to eat dinner. One of the tour company folks gave us directions back to our hotel which took us down some small and very quiet streets. For five minutes or so, we were pretty lost; then we found a street we knew and, soon after, the hotel. It was a little unnerving, but mostly because the city is new to us; we were not threatened by anyone.

The last paragraph is not intended to be either allegorical or parabolic. Take it at face value: here in a country that borders those whom CNN and Fox tell me are all throwing fits and chanting, “Death to America,” I spent a fascinating day getting to know people who are as unsure of what my government is trying to do as I am of theirs. As the calls to prayer wafted through the night air like an exotic aroma, I found comfort and was moved to pray as much with them as for them.

Peace,
Milton