asselamu `aleykum! It’s been over a month since I’ve put up a proper post, but I’ve been busy. With what? Here’s the run-down of all the things I’ve wanted to blog, but didn’t have the time to:
Work:
Work has been crazy lately. Normally we work 6-day work weeks: from Sunday-Thursday, from 10 am to 7:30 pm, and Fridays from 10 am to midnight or later (since it’s a daily newspaper and we don’t work saturdays, we make two newspapers on fridays, one for saturday and one for sunday). That’s the normal schedule. Every now and then, though, we publish supplements for sports tournaments, business conferences, etc. We had quite a few of these in the past few months, which meant more late nights running till midnight or later. So that’s pretty much sucked up a lot of my time and energy.
Arabic:
Unfortunately, not too much progress on this front, mostly do to the demanding upswing in my work schedule, with left me with little time during the week and even less energy to do homework. 
Atatürk Remembrance, Youth and Sports Day:
Yesterday was a national holiday, Atatürk Remembrance, Youth and Sports Day. Well, with that kind of a title, what do you think it was like? Pictures of Atatürk everywhere around the city, with lots of flags all around. (Outside of the normal statues of him in every public square, required pictures of him hanging in every business, etc.) I’d understand a little better if this was like THE independence day holiday of the year, but Turkey gets like this every national holiday. Can you spell s-h-i-r-k?
The Sakkal-i Şerif FIASCO:
So my company, with its thinly-if-at-all-veiled religious connections, managed somehow to get one of the tubes containing sakkal-i şerif — reputedly hairs from the beard of Prophet Muhammad, sall Allahu `alayhi wa sallam — to make a stop at our very own newspaper headquarters. Two imams traveling with the hairs set up a little podium downstairs in the men’s masjid and together with our building ‘imam’ supervised the visiting of the hairs as everyone from the building went down to pay their respects. Now I’ve seen them before, at the Topkapı Palace, and at the palace they are on display in the religious relics room. Basically the display is in a circle and you walk around and see all the things and then you’re done! There’s a guy in a corner of the room reciting Quran the entire time, but there’s no ceremony to anything in the room. At my workplace, though, it was unfortunately another story.
3 pm was the time set aside for women to go see the hairs, so I went down with a coworker. Imagine my surprise at the scene that unfolded: the three imams standing at the podium were chanting the Burda (the poem of the cloak, i think it’s called in english) as a long line of women stood waiting for their respective turns – not to ’see’ them, but to ‘visit’ them/’pay their respects’ (ziyaret). This interesting little ritual had been worked out: you walk up to the podium when it’s your turn, the imam hands you the sealed test tube with some hairs stuck into what looks like wax, you take the tube as you recite salawat, kiss the tube and touch it to your right and then your left eye and make a du`a and it will be answered — wa subhanAllah! La ilaha illa Allah! How about that!?!
I couldn’t really see the hairs from where I was at the back of the line, but as the line dwindled, I realized that everyone who had already taken their turn was still standing on the other side of the room, and so it would be a big awkward mess if I went up and didn’t do the little ritual. So as there were about 10 women left, I decided to quietly make my exit and just go back upstairs to my desk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the imams giving me a funny look, but thought nothing of it, until I was in the elevator on my way up and one of the women who works in my building mentioned to me that the visiting imam had requested I go back downstairs. I kinda froze, but was like, “Oh, did he?” and just brushed it off. When I got to my desk, my phone rang — it was the security/reception desk downstairs, no doubt looking for me to deliver the same message. I’m big on avoidance, so I just ignored the call and hoped they wouldn’t call again. They didn’t — they called my roommate’s desk phone (she’s also a coworker) instead. They told her that the imam had requested I go downstairs, since I hadn’t paid my respects. We told them I wasn’t planning on going back down (she told them this in a much more diplomatic way, i.e., no I hadn’t gone up suddenly without getting what I wanted out of the experience or whatever). Just when I thought I was in the clear, two women from another floor came and told me one of the visiting imams wanted me to go back downstairs, and that he wasn’t going to leave the building until I’d gone down and ‘visited’ the hairs. Ya Rahman!
I didn’t really see any way out (dude, talk about peer pressure), so I very reluctantly followed downstairs one of the girls sent to fetch me. There weren’t many people left in the masjid at that time, just the three imams, the girl, myself and a few other men (men’s masjid, afterall). One of the visiting imams was like, “Where’d you go?” “Uh, I went upstairs, to my desk?” “Why did you go without seeing the sakkal-i şerif?” “Uh, I saw it … from afar,” I said, streching the truth as far as possible. “That won’t do. You have to pay your respects!” he said, smiling all the while, but in a way slightly less than friendly. “This is what you do,” he said, demonstrating the little bid`a’ ritual thing, “And then make a dua!” He handed me the tube, and what could I do? I pretended to mumble something as I lifted the tube near my face and kinda waved it around, before handing it back and getting out of that room as fast as I could. Everyone I saw on my way back upstairs mistook my wet eyes as a sign of my having been affected by the grandeur of the religious encounter. Not so much.
Khayr, insha’Allah. You live and you learn, right? I should have known better than to go downstairs to begin with. Insha’Allah Allah swt will accept my intention — I’d thought about explaining my position, but this is Turkey. It’s shockingly lacking in diversity of thought within the Muslim community (it all leans toward Sufism, there’s no balance), and I would have just been labeled as an extremist by everyone who heard about what happened if I’d explained my reasoning and refused the little ritual, reasoning that none of them would ever understand. May Allah swt forgive me — I didn’t make any dua or anything, so khayr, iA it isn’t considered an act of shirk . It’s funny, when I set out to live in İstanbul, one of the things I’d hoped to acquire was a better sense of tolerance for Muslims with different views, etc. Alhamdulillah, I think that is something that I have learned in my time here, definitely improved on the tolerance front, but I’ve also never felt so isolated within the most important community in my life. It’s a lot to think about.
Visitors:
SubhanAllah, ever since I’ve come to İstanbul, Muslims from the US and Canada that I know have been visiting! There’s rarely a time when there isn’t someone I know from college visiting the city, which is pretty awesome. And now that summer’s rolled around, even more people are coming! Some visit from Egypt where they’ve been studying Egypt, some are on business trips, and some will be stopping in Turkey on their way home form Umrah insha’Allah. Whatever the case, it’s always fun to be able to show someone around a country as beautiful as this one, alhamdulillah 
. It’s fun to be a host when there’s actualy cool stuff around to show people! Another good thing about visitors is that they can import items for you from the US, like Chapstick. If you ever want to send me a present in the mail, send me a tube of plain chapstick, the amazing stuff isn’t found in stores here . And this week, someone brought me 5 boxes of falafel mix from Egypt, yay! Awesomeness .
Stolen shoes:
It had to happen eventually, right? Shoes get stolen in İstanbul. You may think you’re safe, as I did, having lived here for nearly 10 months. When you first get to İstanbul you (hopefully) are really paranoid about making sure you can see your shoes when you’re in the masjid praying, etc., etc. But eventually, you let down your guard — and that’s when they strike! Two weeks ago on Saturday, I was at my teacher’s house for Arabic and, for some reason, I left my shoes outside the door during class. She lives on the top floor of an apartment building that doesn’t even have an elevator, and in a building where random people don’t just come around — it’s not that busy a neighborhood. But when I opened the door to leave 5 hours later, my beautiful, 2-week-old, pure black, low-top Converse All-Stars were gone. It was terrible. My heart will go on, though. Now I only have red chucks and white chucks, so have to match all my clothing accordingly (even though most of my clothes are black). Bummer! *shakes fist at shoe thieves*
