Konya

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Turkey is a land of seemingly infinite contradictions - belly dancers, muslin women fully covered in black, the Imam's call to prayer and the nonstop music videos on display at every turn, small fishing boats and enormous yachts, villas and rusted tin roofed enclaves.



Traveling for us has become an adaptive experience as we integrate diverse cultures into our limited experience base, but it also transports me back in time to the familiar backyard in which I was raised with similar cascading trumpet vines and grape arbors abundant with hanging grape clusters connecting, bridging across my worlds and time.



All along we knew that we wanted to visit Konya's Whirling Dervishes and the Mevlana Museum (Rumi's tomb and mosque) but to experience it in the midst of Ramadan when generous hearts and celebrations overflow enhances the experience beyond measure. We have found meridians filled with roses in full bloom and well maintained shrubbery, parks with trees galore and even community garden spaces with their own individual little garden sheds. The large boulevards and narrow pothole-filled streets, burgeoning middle class and those suffering with obvious abject poverty coexist side by side in a state of becoming - "Come, come again, whoever you are, Come! Heathen, Fire worshiper or Idolatrous, Come! Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times, ours is the portal of hope, come as you are," invites Rumi.



I met a beautiful woman who touched my heart and life sitting in front of a mosque displaying her offerings of plums, tiny green apples and cucumbers on a piece of cloth. When I crouched down to select a handful of plums and placed them in my bag, offering her some money, she looked at me with her dark warm eyes and the sweetest smile and refused to take my money. I insisted several times but she shook her head "no" and proceeded to put a few more tiny apples and cucumbers into my bag signaling that it was a gift. I left stunned and when I looked back again and again thanking her as best as I could, she smiled and nodded her head in response. Even though I have so much, it was this women who had demonstrated immense generosity with her eyes, smile and lovely offerings of fruits. I do not know if this was a Ramadan custom or simply a generous random act of kindness, but she touched and inspired me deeply

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