Exploring Mystical Turkey

Article in this week's Sun Community Newspapers
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Exploring Mystical Turkey
BY NAZBANOO PAHLAVI


At 6 a.m. I awoke to the passionate call of a man’s voice, filled with a soft urgency, transmitted by electronic megaphone from somewhere outside my hotel window. As a first-time visitor to Turkey and the Middle East, this traditional call to prayer was my initiation into the Muslim world. A fitting prelude, I thought, for my pilgrimage in honor of Jalaluddin Rumi, the mystical Sufi poet whose 800th birthday was the purpose of my recent trip through the country.

Sufism is the mystical arm of Islam practiced by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Local Angelenos might be familiar with the Sufi practices of the whirling dervishes, a group of whom have performed at UCLA, and whose methodical turning in their long white robes and tall brown hats represents a means of getting closer to the Divine. UNESCO officially designated 2007 as the year of Rumi and celebrations were held in the city of Konya in south-central Turkey, the poet’s place of birth and burial. The city was brimming with scores of pilgrims from as close as neighboring Iran to as far as China and the United States.

As I traveled with an Istanbul-based Sufi music group, my journey was shaped around all things mystical. I felt this in every area from the tombs of well-known Sufi sheiks (teachers) to the Rumi-inspired knick-knacks in the bazaar shops. More than anything, I witnessed it when our bus broke down on the first day of the bayram holidays that mark the end of the Ramadan fasting period. A humble family in the countryside welcomed us into their modest home, offered us tea and fresh goat’s milk, and exemplified the hospitality and warmth I often witnessed across the region.

Istanbul itself is an enigmatic city and the only one of its size to straddle two continents – Europe to the east and Asia to the west. I saw this melding of east and west in the modern, retail-filled streets of the cosmopolitan Taksim area that teemed with youths eager for the nightlife. I saw it too at the striking Hagia Sophia, a house of both Muslim and Christian history, which welcomed tourists daily and beckoned seagulls every night to circle its grandly lit dome.

Before setting off on my trip, I had heard a lot of good things from friends who had been to Turkey. I discovered this has less to do with place and more to do with people. One member of the music group I traveled with – a German native who married the group’s founder – said something I found particularly fitting. She told me that the people of the Occident think with their heads, while those of the Middle East think with their hearts. Whether suitable or not in politics, it proved a pleasure in travel.