Istanbul 01: Call to Prayer

Five times a day the call issues forth from the amplified speakers mounted atop the minarets. These days, the muezzin need not bother climbing the steps up the tower. Because of my training, I wonder (fully aware that I am alone in this) about the metaphysical implications of relying so on technology.

You hear the short buzz and click of the microphone being turned on before the call actually begins. Sometimes you can make out a word; most notable, of course: “Allah,” even though it’s stretched beyond comprehension like countless amen’s of so many Christmas carols.

We arrived too late the first night. Old Istanbul was fast asleep by the time our shuttle reached the hotel. In the morning—even earlier, perhaps, with jetlag and insomnia factored in—the call shocked me awake, but not before shifting my otherwise mundane dreams into vivid Technicolor animation about a drunken vampire. I wanted it to shut up, to go away.

But when the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii) is directly across the street from your hotel, just beyond the paved track of the ancient Byzantine hippodrome, it is up to you to get used to it.

When I see Arabic written, I think of snakes, thanks to Sonia, who, so many years ago, once referred to it as “that snake language.” Every letter looks like a serpent—some with eyes, some with curved tails. Each hissing out the mysterious beauty of that ancient desert tongue. Hearing it—and I’m only assuming that the liturgical language of Turkey is (still) Arabic—made me think of snakes flying through the air, twisting their way into the ears of the devotees.

The call lasts for several minutes. At times, it seems endless, and at other times, abrupt and too quickly ended. And the echoes across Istanbul from the other mosques make it seem even more enigmatic and not of this world.

The evening call retained its splendor and sublimity throughout my entire stay, but already by the third day, I was sleeping through the morning call like a local.

May Day, May Day

As if to prove the rule from yesterday’s post, today’s headlines included “U.S. airstrike kills top Qaeda agent in Somalia” and “Car bomb kills at least 9 in Baghdad; U.S. troops kill 18 militants.” How smart our bombs—how intelligent their design!—must be to only kill “militants” and “insurgents” but never a single “civilian” or “freedom fighter.” Or even a single American soldier. (You have to love the grafted-together nature of the second headline, as if to call further attention to the us vs. them nature of the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.) Yet the dangerous statistics remains: over half of all war fatalities are women and children. Perhaps we need a new math to go along with our new language and new logic. And new extra-judicial killings in the name of justice.

On a more “peaceful” note, the tit-for-tat political posturing between DC and Minsk has escalated: the US has closed its embassy in Minsk and has ordered Belarus to close its embassy and all consulates here. Everyone sing along: There’s no diplomacy like no diplomacy, like the no diplomacy I know.

I wonder how many questions on the standardized (yet altogether lacking standards) TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge & Skills) test this week will deal with such issues. How many will even concern the topic of May Day, a day that commemorates the benefits of labor? One glorious benefit from this less-than-glorious revolution in education: the golden opportunity to read such priceless statements like this from my college-level philosophy course essays: “This makes me wonder what will we enlighten our people on next?” It does make one wonder, no?

I (modestly, of course) propose enlightening “our people” on patriotism:

“What, then, is patriotism? ‘Patriotism, sir is the last resort of scoundrels,’ said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.” [from Emma Goldman’s essay “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty”]

On this note, I bid all working peoples of the world a blessed day of rest. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” And God bless Saint Emma.