To the mosque!

It is prayer time. I have showered, unpacked and rugged up. What will I find at Sultan Ahmet masjid? What will access be like? What will worship be like?

I am disappointed to find that everyone's gone out without me, thinking that I am asleep. I guess that is because I fiddled around for so long getting ready, got caught up watching world news...

I am reticent to head out alone, but the brother at reception reassures me and points out that you can easily orient yourself with the Blue Mosque.

So I head out tentatively, feel the caress of light, snowy air- it's not as cold now... I whirl around slowly in the cobbled street- every angle is a photograph, every view is a picture...

I make my way up the cobbled street towards towering minarets. I am waylaid first by the eye-catching shops, and then by their owners. I am ushered in and given tea. I am shown beautiful textiles under the glow of colourful lamps. There are three floors of things, multiple shops just like this.However will I choose what to buy? I fall in love with a red silk bed cover and a table cover in beautiful blue. I tell the assistant, his name "Qurban", that I will return with my friend who will help me to buy.

A few shocks greet me in the mosque courtyard. First, there are dogs. Alsatian dogs. Running around freely. I gulp and tread a wide path around them. I find, though, that because the freedom of street life is the norm for them, they are not particularly interested in passing humans. More charmingly, cats repose everywhere: outside carpet stores: on chess sets in shop windows: on icy courtyard benches. Australian cats by comparison seem cloistered, oppressed.

The next courtyard pest is very human and very interested in passers by. He is selling Istanbul guides. He is extremely skilled at his work and I want to bring him to Australia to work for my husband. (Ismail, wait until I explain the flawlessness of his technique, you will love it!) Needless to say I now own a guide and two books of postcards...

The athan begins, athans actually: competing calls from different sides of the city. I quickly set my camera to video in an attempt to capture it. Again, I am dervish-like, spinning, absorbing it all...

If I can claim to have got it right with packing for Istanbul, it is in the inspired wisdom of spending a couple of hundred bucks on my Salomon water-proof boots. I am loving them with thick merino socks. But I do not want to leave them on the shoe rack at the masjid! I bag them up and do so however, hesitantly...

I tumble into the centre of the vast salat room, a little ungraciously. Before I have even thought to look...up...an attendant strides towards me, pointing to the back and a small area behind screens, albeit beautiful ones. I head over, only mildly disappointed (I mean, I am in the Sultan Ahmet mosque!) and make my initial salat between women who pray swiftly in rustling winter abayas. It is only when sitting after my sunnah, waiting for the jamat to begin that I look...up...and gasp at the indescribable beauty of the ceiling.

I can hardly take it in. My prayer has not been mindful today and I understand that it reflects my scattered, post-flight condition. I hope this morning, after a marathon sleep, that I will be able to focus on my prayer, and further absorb and comprehend that ceiling and its staggering beauty.

(PS, learned a trick: can take my boots in plastic bag with me into the women's area ;))