Cold mosque, warm hearts

Upon waking at 3am from a twelve hour sleep, there was really no excuse not to go to Sultan Ahmet Mosque for fajr. So I headed out into the quiet streets. After making some pretty poor attempts at night photography, I headed into the masjid. Almost immediately a little black and white cat sprang into view. Spotting me, she wasted no time in approaching and curling herself around my legs, seeking warmth in the freezing cold.

I entered the inner courtyard and she bounded across in front of me, scaling the shelves outside the entrance to the prayer area, playing madly. She approached again as I sat to remove my boots, attracted by the rustling plastic bag I had produced from my coat pocket. I was so surprised when she jumped up on my lap and began enthusiastically snuggling in. We sat like that for awhile until I noticed others arriving and entering the mosque.

As I tried to shift the cat to stand up, she braced her little legs, not wanting to be moved. I let her sit a bit longer and asked the security guard about her. His English was not great but I managed to ascertain that the cat lived behind the Sultan Ahmet Mosque and is not a stray, but well fed and looked after. She certainly looked it- she was quite rotund and her coat was extremely clean and shiny, unlike many of the cats seen in the streets here.

As I finally ejected the cat and entered the mosque (the cat entered too by the way!) I noticed a woman making thikr at the back, not behind the screen though. I went and stood there too, and made a couple of cycles of prayer. After we had sat for awhile like that she stood up and began to speak to me in Turkish and to gesture. I recited my usual "Fazla Turkce bilyorum" (I don't speak much Turkish), then "Inglis". I guessed that she was saying, "It's cold here, let's move" so I nodded and followed her behind the screen were there were several more warm bodies.

The woman was very, very sweet. She looked a bit like my Mum-in-law actually. She carried a small prayer rug and made sure to share it with me.

The fajr prayer was beautiful: it was wonderful to hear the Imam recite, I felt filled with the Qur'an from head to toe.

The one and only reason I sat through 45 minutes of the Imam's lengthy post-fajr talk, in Turkish, was because I hoped to have a conversation with the kind woman afterwards. Finally, however, I was cold almost to shivering point and, regrettably, needed to move on. I wondered how long the Imam would actually talk for and how long the women would sit, praying, rocking gently, and murmuring quiet "amins" and thikr in the searing cold. I shared a warm farewell with the kind woman and left the mosque, affixing my almost permanent scarf/niqab across my face and hurrying back to the hotel and the physical comforts of air conditioning, coffee and fresh omelette.