My son is in Istanbul this week, researching his honors thesis before his senior year of college starts up in the fall, with the crazy wonderfulness of young people who don't know any limits to their energy. Istanbul is one of my favorite cities, and given my personal mission to embrace and embody cultural mash-ups, it's almost the perfect place for me.
I'm pleased and proud that even without any prodding on my part, my children have taken up the call for diversity in its ultimate form: diversity where it's hard to tell where one thing stops and another begins. One might argue that a call to prayer is the ultimate request for submission to someone's personal vision of God. I don't hear this when I listen to these beautiful calls. I don't hear a voice that is narrow, that asks me to become one thing, that asks me to stifle all that I am.
In Istanbul, one is able to see both Asia and Europe, where they blend, and where they separate. In the above video, there are two mosque calls happening simultaneously, one in Asia, one in Europe. I would love for you, my reader, to extrapolate just a bit further. You may not be Asian or European or even American…this is where the internet is incredible, because my audience is the world but this tool allows me to speak personally to each and every one of my visitors. But regardless of your ethnicity or religion or interests, imagine a way of being where you do not have to deny any part of what you are, but are welcome with the mash-up of ALL of what you are.
That's exactly what I am and what I look for, each and every moment.
Here's a wonderful travelogue through the different calls to prayer at different Turkish mosques, not recorded by my son (whose project has nothing to do with mosques!) but is fabulous anyway.
I really enjoyed this post. I also visited Istanbul and other parts of Turkey as a research student. I remember being woken at dawn on my first morning having no clue what the call was. It was sort of terrifying to hear it coming from all directions. I grew to love it though. Instanbul is a fascinating city. I’d love to go back.
Thanks for this great anecdote! The call to prayer is different from mosque to mosque, but I’ve noticed that they are even more distinctively different from country to country. I wish I had recorded the call to prayer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was very severe, as befits that landscape and their fundamentalist beliefs. It was beautiful, but in the way that a harsh climate is beautiful. I love Istanbul, too, and would love to go back!