Coming Home!

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Hello Everyone,

This is my last entry before coming home. I am at the airport at Heathrow in London, with 2 hours to wait, so I thought I would finish up a few thoughts.

Yesterday, I spent the last day of my travels alone as most conference attendees had gone home. I had a room booked at the Sapphire Hotel, near to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. I went for a walk to the bazaar in the afternoon and finished a bit of shopping, then bought myself a grilled corn. That is a common item in Istanbul, as it was as well in Kenya. Cristelle and I tried it in Bumala last week and so I thought it would be nice and handy to go for another one.

The temperatures were still very high -- at around 38 to 40 degrees -- although I find that the lower humidity makes it quite bearable for me. I went back to my hotel room in the early afternoon and finished packing. I have accumulated so much in the last three weeks, including a great dal of paperwork from the conference and some books, that I was a bit concerned that I would be overweight. I repacked the best I could hoping that I would not be over the 20 kilos allowed for each bag (later at the Istanbul airport I discovered that one bag turned up at 20.1 kilos and the other at 17.9 kilograms, so I guessed everything correctly).

After repacking everything, I thought I would have a quiet evening and took my camera and audio recorder and walked back up a few streets to the Blue mosque. I got there at about 5:30 pm and discovered that the call to prayer was at 8:47 PM. I was really interested in trying to record the sound of the call so I spent the next three hours just hanging out, meditating, and watching the light as it moved through the mosque. The call to prayer occurs right at sunset so the lowering sun streams through the large open doorways and stained glass windows at several angles before dissappearing below the surrounding fortress walls.

About 45 minutes before the call to prayer, I saw a caucasian man (the only other one apart from myself that I had seen all day) setting up a video camera behind the restricted prayer area. He turned out to be a video documentarist from Germany doing an educational film on mosques, etc. We struck up a good conversation and it turns out it was his last night in Istanbul as well, and that his film partners had returned and left him to catch a few last bits of footage. We developed a good rapport and I mentioned that I had hoped to be able to tape record the call to prayer, as well as the prayers. He said that would not be possible becasue the security police usually kick out everyone except those who have cmoe to pray. However, he said he would try to talk to the Imam to see if he could pass me off as an assistant to him holding the microphone. He walked arund for some time and eventually found the Imam. After some discussion, he returned to announce that the Imam would not go for it. I said no problem and that I would figure out somethig anyway. He went back to work an began his recording.

I remained in the "public" section of the main floor. To give you a sense of the situation, the Blue Mosque is an enormous cathedral-like structure well over 100 high inside. The walls are ornately decorated and it is truely a wonderous and awe-bnspiring sight to behold. The main floor is divided into 2/3 and 1/3, with the larger section fenced off and reserved for those coming to pray. The public comes in on one side of the Mosque, views the entire structure from the 1/3 space, and exits the other side. I perched myself off to the side but up against the 3 foot high carved wooden dividing fence that stretched accross the floor. I was areful positioned underneath a speaker and placed my recorder in an inconspicuous place. I then sat cross-legged facing the front, and went in a prayer position, slowly rocking back and forth. The guards came by and, noticing that I appeared to be "deep in contemplation", decided not to disturb me. I was able to record everything for the next 1/2 hour. I devout woman sitting a few feet from me saw that I had recorded the entire event and asked me to send her the recording if I could. She gave me her email address and I agreed to forward her the audio file.

Leaving the mosque, it was already 9:30 pm and getting dark. The brightly lit minarets glowed luminously against the dusky horizon, as the sun gave out its last rays against the blackening skies. I took another round of images of the mosque at night and it was simply stunning to take in all of this and know that millions of pilgrims have viewed this same panorama for centuries.

I ended the evening with a slow walk back to my hotel room. The night air was still warm and the temperature only gets down to about 25 degrees celcius at night. I stopped at a Chinese restaurant on the way home and bought some "take out", reaklising that I had totally forgotten to eat supper. I got back to my room, ate, and turned in at about 11:00 pm. I made a reservation to get a wake up call at 4:30 am and a taxi at 5:30 am. The wake up call did not come although I woke up easily without an alarm anyway.

The ride to the airport was uneventful, as was boarding. I tried to buy a little breakfast but a coffee and two small pastries came to 20 Turkish Liras (which is about $20 Canadian) so I decide to forego breakfast and wait for the airplane food (British Airways food is pretty good).

I have everythign sorted out at Heathrow now and should be boarding soon for Canada. I fly direct to Calgary, then have an hour to switch for a flight to Edmonton. I believe I arrive about 8:30 pm tonight (Thursday) and should be home about 10:00 pm by the time I catch the shuttle back to Edmonton.

It will be nice to get back to the "real" world. I have a lot of work to come home to, as well. I have an offer to publish an article in a book, as well as an article on One Child's Village, so all in all it was another very successful leg of the trip.

See you all soon.

Todd :-)

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