Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Istanbul

Three summers ago, I had the chance of a lifetime to go to Turkey for three weeks.  We were studying the Ottoman Empire, and we traveled all over the country looking at historically significant buildings, cities, and tombs.  We explored traditions that still exist and things that had passed on since the Ottoman Empire dissolved.  It was a truly amazing trip.

While the whole thing was unforgettable, parts of it stand out to me in perfect detail.  One was eating at this truck stop on the side of a highway.  The entire place was surrounded by a seemingly endless field of sunflowers in full bloom.  It was like something out of a fairy tale.  I wanted to just run out into the middle of it and take in the wonder of it.  I settled for a ton of photos instead.

The second was standing under the dome of Selimiye in Edirne.  We also saw Suleymaniye in Istanbul, and it was indeed lovely, but its older sister took my breath away.  Sinan was a genius, and when left to his own devices, a creator of perfect grace and symmetry.

The most unforgettable place was much, much older.  I had wanted to see Hagia Sophia for as long as I can remember knowing about it. I have loved the name since I learned what it means, Holy Wisdom.  When I stood under that golden dome on floors over a thousand years old, it completely stole not my breath but my heart.  I went back again on my own when we had a free day just so I could sit down on the cool stone and stare up into that glory.  The beauty of that place, its sense of sacredness, was like a physical thing.  I have only ever been one other place that came close, the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.

Even though we were on the road for a solid week, the rest of our time was spent based in the Sultanahmet district near the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome, Topkapi, the Grand Bazaar, and the Basilica Cistern.  We learned, we met people, we explored, and I came to love that city.  We never met anyone who wasn't willing to help us.  Everywhere people were kind and friendly.  Part of me very much wanted to stay there and know it better.

So now, when I see that the rabid violence of suicide bombing has attacked it again, has blown up the very airport we came into and out of, I grieve for the lost and the injured, but I also grieve for Istanbul.  That city, that ancient lovely place, deserves to be cherished and protected. It is a unique thing that spans centuries, cultures, empires, languages, even continents.  The true goal of the terrorists is, of course, to make people afraid.  Afraid to go to places like Istanbul or Paris, these important places where it's possible to see both the ancient past and maybe the future side by side.  Afraid to go to places away from home.  Afraid of "others."

I've had the "it's not safe to go" conversation already today.  I'll hear it increasingly.  I've thought it myself.  I have to keep telling myself, though, that it's not safe anywhere.  Psychopaths walk into our schools and universities, our night clubs, our office buildings, every day with evil intent and heavy weaponry.  Even here in this tiny rural place I live, child abductions are attempted, homes are invaded when predators think those inside are elderly or weak.  Whatever safety we used to think we had has somehow disappeared, and national borders don't seem to have a lot to do with it. Why then should we allow them to cage us in a corner?

Hamlet tells us that "the readiness is all."  We cannot know when our time is coming.  We cannot live our whole lives looking for the shadow to fall, listening for Death's soft footfalls coming up behind us.  I think we live in a world where it is easy to be afraid all the time, where we certainly have cause for fear.  If we give in to it, though, all those horrible, rabid, twisted bastards win.  I think we have to keep going places, embracing each other, learning about each other.  If this plague of hate is ever going to be defeated, it has to come from its opposite, unity instead of isolation.

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