Having been in that (admittedly temporary) position, I sympathize with immigrants in my own country. I know what it is like to look different, speak differently, and believe different things.

We never experienced any anti-Western or anti-American sentiment in Turkey even though Turks, indeed Muslims in general, have reason to be unhappy with Christians. For several hundred years, in some cases ending only in the 1960’s, Christian nations governed nearly every country in the Middle East. Less than a hundred years ago, Christian powers signed a secret treaty to carve up Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Turkey and Iraq, into French and British spheres of control. A half-century ago, the United States, which many consider a Christian country, replaced the democratically-elected president of Iran with a dictator, leading to decades of unrest. America’s 2004 invasion of Iraq led to massive death and destruction.

These historic facts could have put Sankar and me in danger. A Turkish politician, trying to improve his poll numbers, might have decided to rile people up about the Christian minority living in their midst. Turkish media could have decided to remind people of Christian aggressions visited upon Muslims. Turkish authorities might have determined that, given the history of Christians dominating Islamic countries, Christians should be deported from Turkey.

But that didn’t happen. Instead Sankar and I were humbled by Turkish courtesies that went far above what we normally offer. On a weekend vacation in southwestern Turkey, we got lost and asked a laborer and his wife for directions. They drove forty minutes out of their way to guide us back to the turnoff we’d missed. In Istanbul, one of Sankar’s Muslim colleagues spent several hours hunting down parking for us so we could attend Easter Services. Muslim friends insisted on driving us up to the world’s first Christian church outside Antioch, and waited respectfully as we toured it.

I am disappointed by American’s worsening attitudes toward and treatment of its Muslim citizens. In the three weeks since the 2016 presidential election, there have been more than a hundred anti-Muslim incidents in the U.S. The New York Times has started a series called “This Week in Hate,” to chronicle bigotry of all kinds. It reports that several American mosques have recently received letters stating that Donald Trump will “do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews.” An Arab Uber driver in Queens recorded a video of another driver telling him that Trump would deport him. And in New Mexico a shopper wearing a hijab received verbal abuse from another woman.

Last week’s Ohio State attacker happened to be Muslim, but the majority of our previous assailants have been white American males, their religious background never mentioned. Why, then, in the case of someone clearly acting in violation of the Islamic faith, is religion brought to the fore?

Sankar and I saw a lot of dazzling sights in Turkey, but for me, the most remarkable thing was that we were judged as individuals. From the hospitality and kindness we received, Turks clearly were not dwelling on past Christian misdeeds. Why not? Maybe it is because Turkey has a long history of religious bloodshed. Turks know all too well what kind of horrors can occur when people’s prejudices are inflamed.

The post This Week in Hate appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

This is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir . . .

Our upcoming relocation was no longer breaking news. The machinery of the move had started up, the most visible effect our now-empty living room. We had packed and sent personal effects, including a sofa and three upholstered chairs to Turkey. They would be at sea for about three months, arriving in Istanbul in June, 2010.

My focus had narrowed. Business-like, I dug into the many tasks at hand—putting together an air shipment, changing mailing and billing addresses, renewing my passport, and starting to learn some Turkish words. For the time being, I ceased contemplating how Turkish life might agree with me.

Three times each week after breakfast, I put on padded headphones with an attached microphone, and sat down at my computer. After logging in, I heard the pleasant voice of Fatma, my new Turkish teacher. “Iyi gunler, Susan. Nasilsiniz?” Good day, Susan. How are you?

Fatma, a resident of North Carolina, was brought to me in real time by Berlitz. I could not only hear her via the headphones, but I could also see the movement of her cursor on my screen. After greeting me, Fatma asked me to greet her. Then she brought up a set of pictures on my monitor and pointed at them, asking me for their names in Turkish.

When I got an answer correct, Fatma would exclaim, harika (HAAA ree kah), excellent. I loved that word, and worked hard so that I could hear it again and again from her. It had been easy to learn the word, harika. But unfortunately, less emotionally-saturated vocabulary resisted settling into my mind. Turkish words seemed to hit my middle-aged cranium and bounce right back off, only to gear up for another assault the next time I had a lesson.

Fatma spent over a week pointing at numbers from one to ten and saying, Bu iki? (Is this two?) Bu beş? (Is this five?) Bu sekiz? (Is this eight?) It was only after dozens of repetitions that I could remember these basic numbers, and altı, six, would remain a problem.

One day I decided to use all the Turkish words I had learned thus far—both from Fatma and from my visit to Istanbul—to write a poem. Word choice was easy with such a limited number to choose from. My attempt, heavy on foods and numbers, was fun to read aloud:

–Bir, iki, ooch
(One, two, three)
–Orhan Pamuk
(Turkish Nobel Laureate)

–SaBANji, KAHvey, doeNAIR
(university name, coffee, grilled lamb dish)
–JaDAYsee, lowKOOM, isKANder
(boulevard, Turkish delight, lamb dish)

–Kebab, AYran, dunYAHsuh
(kebab, salty yogurt drink, world)
–Simit, chai, chorBAsuh
(sesame ring, tea, soup)

–BILgee, dort, guNIGHdun
(information, four, good morning)
–Lost final sezon
(seen on billboards all over Istanbul in January, 2010)

Despite mastery of these words, I was having difficulty adding to my vocabulary. Why? Was I simply too distracted by moving details? Was it that the meanings were, unlike Spanish, seldom easy to guess? I was beginning to realize that my Spanish skills, a long-standing source of pride, were due in great part to the large number of Spanish-English cognates.

Or was it my age, the decreasing plasticity of my brain? I hadn’t sat down to study a new language since I was 24 years old. That was in 1979.

I was also having trouble retaining Turkish history. I had now read several accounts of Byzantine and Ottoman times, but the information hadn’t coalesced into any kind of clear, mental narrative. When people asked me about Turkish history, all I could do was proclaim my recent discovery: that the country used to be Christian, but now was Muslim.

Founding Father

If I couldn’t yet comprehend Turkey’s ancient past, maybe I could get a handle on its most recent century. On a list of recommended reading in the back of my guidebook, I discovered a book called Crescent and Star: Turkey at the Crossroads by Steven Kinzer. Kinzer had recently served as New York Times Istanbul bureau chief. Also listed was a memoir called Turkish Reflections, by Mary Lee Settle. Settle was the first woman to win an American Book Award. I ordered both books from Amazon.

Success! Kinzer’s writing on Turkey’s twentieth century drew me right in. In fact, I found myself reading lengthy, detailed chapters in one sitting. The new information involved topics like World War I and European colonial designs on the Middle East, which were already familiar to me. It went down—or, I should say, went in—easily.

I learned that I was headed for a Muslim republic whose founding father had declared, “I have no religion and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea.” That would be Mustafa Kemal, the man known as Atatürk.

I learned that it is impossible to overstate Atatürk’s importance to modern Turkey.

At the start of World War I, concerned about British and French domination of the Middle East, Turkey threw its support behind Germany. This miscalculation hastened the Ottoman Empire’s demise. As the Great War ended, representatives of Sultan Mehmet VI signed a treaty with Great Britain, France, and Italy, allowing Turkey to be carved into British, French, Italian, and Greek spheres of influence.

British warships entered the Bosphorus, putting Istanbul under international control. France took over land near its new Syrian colony, and Italy moved across Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Greece, promised Turkey’s western provinces by the British, seized Thrace and the Aegean coastline.

Mustafa Kemal, a blonde, blue-eyed army commander from Salonika in Ottoman Greece, disagreed. Esteemed for successfully defending Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula, Kemal defied the ruling sultans, dashing around the country by horse and train, rousing an impoverished, defeated population.

People defending their own soil can accomplish what seems impossible. In 1922, the Turkish army led by Kemal managed to drive Greek forces down from the central Anatolian plateau, where they had overreached, back to Turkey’s westernmost city of Smyrna (known today as Izmir). Kemal’s forces then set fire to the city, literally pushing the Greeks into the sea. It was a horrific massacre, with hundreds of people drowning or burning to death. And it caused the Allies to relinquish their claim on Turkish territory.

Turkey had successfully resisted dismemberment. In 1923, with a mandate from an adoring nation, Mustafa Kemal became the Turkish Republic’s first president. He renamed himself Kemal Atatürk, the latter meaning “father of all Turks.”

With bad memories of punitive teachers at his Islamic primary school, and revulsion over the subservience of Turkey’s sultan to Western powers, Atatürk abolished the centuries-old Islamic caliphate. He elevated the Turkish military and moved the country’s capital from Istanbul, a city reminiscent of the debauched sultans, to Ankara, in the Anatolian heartland. Long an admirer of French modernity and advancement, he changed the Turkish alphabet from the Arabic to the Latin script, replying to his mostly illiterate constituents, “You will learn it in two weeks.”

The Hagia Sofia, formerly the largest church in Christendom, had served as a mosque since the Muslim conquest of 1453. In 1935, Atatürk proclaimed it a site of world heritage, and turned it into a museum.

Church and State

One might think that the Atatürk era, relatively free of religious strictures, was tolerant and liberal. But, perhaps because of the existential threat the country had just faced down, it was characterized by an emphasis on Turkish identity. Ethnic Greeks born in Turkey were sent back to Greece in a population exchange. The teaching of indigenous languages such as Kurdish, and the granting of non-Turkish names to babies was forbidden. A Kurdish independence movement was quashed. Minorities such as Alevis and the few Armenians that remained after their mass extermination a decade earlier under the Ottomans, were marginalized. No longer a multi-ethnic empire, Turkey became a nation of a single homogenous identity.

Atatürk replaced the Islamic calendar with the European one, and proclaimed Sunday the weekly holiday. Rather than pulling church and state apart, he turned them on their head, putting religious affairs under state control. He banned the fez, leading to protests in which 200 men died, and the headscarf, long part of Turkish peasant dress. He forbade people wearing these from entering government buildings, including public schools.

I would soon witness the extent to which Turks revered Atatürk. Kinzer describes today’s Turkey as remarkable, a place where it is perfectly acceptable to be non-religious, to never darken the door of a mosque or learn how to pray. Turks commonly drink rakı (an unsweetened, anise-flavored alcoholic drink), dance with members of the opposite sex and dress as those in the West. Kinzer feels it is one of the marvels of Turkey that the country is officially 98% Muslim, yet offers its people such a range of lifestyle choices.

Most of this can be traced back to Atatürk, and most of it is positive. But to Atatürk, the proper Turk was one in whose life religion plays little or no role. He considered believers superstitious people who held their country back. This Kinzer believes, marginalized over half the Turkish population. Kinzer feels that government actions such as writing sermons for imams, and excluding women who wear headscarves from high schools and universities violated freedoms of speech and privacy:

“In every culture that has existed over the entire course of human history, people have sought answers to the great mysteries of existence. Invariably they turn to religion. . . Wise leaders, even the most atheistic among them, know they must balance the sacred and secular impulses in their societies. Those who governed the Turkish Republic for the first eighty years of its existence were unable or unwilling to strike that balance. This led many Muslims to conclude that they had to choose between their religious faith and allegiance to the state. No state has ever prevailed in such a confrontation.” page 59-60

Hmm. “No state has ever prevailed.” Ominous words! Kinzer’s ideas complemented my understanding of human nature. It seemed to me that treating religious people unfairly—anywhere in the world—was asking for trouble. Was I heading to a country where a kind of vengeful payback was about to occur? I would read other books about modern Turkish history, but Kinzer’s was the only one that viewed its religious politics from a purely human perspective. As for Turkish Reflections, Mary Lee Settle simply stated that, “Atatürk went too far with religion.”

I had several family members who disdained the U.S. government. I couldn’t help asking one, “How would you feel if the American government decided to write the sermons you hear in church?” I received a look of incredulous disbelief.

The Western press called Turkey’s current leader “mildly Islamic.” I already knew that not all Turks liked him. During our look-see visit we had asked our driver, Aras, about the man, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Aras had first glanced around the restaurant we were lunching in. Then, lowering his head and speaking softly, he had confided that, “Erdoğan is trying to turn Turkey into Iran.”

What to make of this, sitting in my Minnesota living room? It seemed odd that a Muslim country would restrict the religious rights of Muslims. I had thought that in Muslim countries, Islam affected nearly every aspect of life. Now I realized that, at least in the case of Turkey, I was wrong.

The new information was intriguing, a refreshing change from my country’s wrangling over health care reform. It put American problems into perspective: another country was perhaps more divided than mine! And the fact that my mind was finally allowing something in was exhilarating. I guess for me, Turkey’s recent history was as emotionally charged as the word, harika.

Sankar left for Istanbul at the beginning of March, eager to begin work. It amused me that he was moving so enthusiastically to a Muslim country. Raised Hindu, he had witnessed sporadic Hindu-Muslim strife in India, often quite serious. He had in the past described Muslims as inflexible, combative.

“I can’t believe you’re happy moving to a place that’s 98 percent Muslim.” I commented as I helped him fold clothes into his suitcase.

“Oh it’s no problem,” Sankar replied. “Turks are ‘Muslim Lite.’”

We laughed. I guessed I had Atatürk to thank for that.

The post Studying Turkish appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Non-sidebar sidenote: I’m one of those people who’s sure she won’t like something (like, olives) until she’s locked in a dark prison cell and forced to try it. Then she raves about it on Twitter.

Sandy’s employer had moved us before: to Costa Rica back in the 1990s. Our children became soccer stars, and we all picked up Spanish. But Turkey? It was a country I knew little about. A Muslim country in Asia Minor, one with an obscure and most likely difficult language.

But the move was good for Sandy’s career, so I agreed to give it a try.

Our childhoods began there

I began gathering information. A friend gave me a book called Eyewitness Travel Turkey.  When I got around to opening it, I was surprised to discover some familiar names. Aladdin. King Midas. St Nicholas. Topkapi.

You remember that story of greedy King Midas, right? The jerk touched everything including his wife and it all became gold.

One page contained photos of eye-catching pottery. The text described a town that “first reached prominence in AD 325, when it was known as Nicea.” It went on to say that a council was held there, producing “a statement of doctrine on the nature of Christ in relation to God.”

Hmm. A council in a place called Nicea?

Could this be related to the Nicene Creed I’d recited on communion Sundays throughout my obnoxiously Lutheran childhood?

 I believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds. Begotten, not made. Being of one substance with the Father . . . And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son. . .

How do I remember that better than what I did last weekend?

I had never studied Turkish history, but this improbable link between my childhood and an ancient conclave in Asia Minor spurred me to read further. Whenever I had time, I pulled out Eyewitness Travel Turkey. I read about Roman baths and cisterns, a “Tulip” Mosque, and an archaeological museum with “one of the world’s richest collections of classical artifacts.” I picked up the lyrical Turkish Reflections by Mary Lee Settle; Crescent and Star, Stephen Kinzer’s analysis of current events in Turkey; and Birds Without Wings, a novel about an early 20^th-century Anatolian village.

All were rewarding to read. I no longer felt a sense of loss when I thought of our upcoming move.

It’s not really a Muslim county

Okay, so it is Muslim. Let me explain.

In mid-2010, Sandy and I moved to Istanbul. The first thing we learned is that Turkey does not fit Western preconceptions of your average Muslim land. Back in 1923, a guy named Ataturk, the Republic’s first Prime Minister, set out to modernize Turkey, and he was good at it. Among other things I’m forgetting, this included transforming it into a secular state. He abolished the Islamic caliphate, banned the fez, and discouraged women from wearing the traditional headscarf that disguised beauty. Ataturk turned Istanbul’s magnificent Hagia Sophia, which had been a church for nearly a millennium but was then functioning as a mosque, into a museum.

He made a mosque into a museum. That’s like inviting people to the White House, or something.

It’s got style oh yes it does

On the streets of Istanbul we saw both men and women wearing the latest in styles. Numerous chic bars and restaurants beckoned. The Turks we met had a decidedly casual attitude toward their Muslim heritage.

Western or not, Istanbul’s size and its bewildering maze of winding, traffic-filled streets were challenging. Think of New York City down below the numbered streets. Sandy and I often got so lost we were vulnerable to the sales pitches of local vendors.

Thank God the local vendors were good people.

Although we encountered friendliness and hospitality everywhere, we struggled with homesickness and the constant tension of having to express ourselves in a new language.

Travel isn’t a big deal

And day trips are dime a dozen.

Eager to expand on the very first connection I had made with Turkey, we began planning a trip to Nicea, now known as Iznik. The town lay about three hours south, and on a Saturday morning in July we found ourselves driving onto a ferry that would take us and our car across the Sea of Marmara, completing the first leg of the trip.

After the ferry docked, we drove east along a large lake also named Iznik, passing miles of olive groves.

Soon we began to see the town ahead of us, its low pastel-colored buildings hugging the eastern shore of the lake.

Between the fourth and eight centuries AD, not one, but seven councils were held in Turkey to help create Christianity. I hadn’t realized my religion needed to be put in order. Hadn’t it enjoyed a golden period in which there was no dissension? Hadn’t God’s words flowed clearly from Christ Himself?  It sounded as if public relations—message management—had been needed almost immediately.

So here’s one big finding from this council:

Several hundred dignitaries had attended the first council, held in 325 AD. They included the bishop of Myra, whose life became the inspiration for St. Nicholas; the patriarchs of Egypt, Antioch and Jerusalem; and John, the bishop of Persia and India. The meeting was full of controversy, the dispute being this: If Christ was born of Mary, then He must have come into being at a specific time and place. But doctrine states that Christ has always existed.

How to reconcile this? One way, the council determined, was to define Christ as having two natures, human and divine.

Ahh, two natures. I’ll take ice cream and napping.

Not all attendees accepted this theological sleight of hand, but the majority hammered out what we call the Nicene Creed, with its (heretofore mysterious) lines: Begotten not made. Being of one substance with the Father.

100 years since 4th grade, still not understanding that line.

You can freely roam Roman ruins

Lol.

We drove into Iznik through an opening in an ancient Roman wall.  In the town center lay the church where the creed was written, a squat building whose alternate layers of brick and stone, a Byzantine effort to cushion against earthquakes, gave it a striped appearance.

Called the Hagia Sofia, but not to be confused with the vastly bigger and grander Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, the 1700-year-old structure had no steeple, just several small cupolas poking above the roof like overturned, fluted cups.

On its south side stood a minaret. This was installed when it became a mosque after the 1331 Ottoman conquest. The mosque later fell into disuse. After World War I, the building had, just like its eponymous big sister in Istanbul, been made a museum.

The Muslim conquest of the land mass now know as Turkey occurred over four whole centuries, culminating in the fall of Constantinople in 1453.  In the various tours I’ve taken within Turkey, my guides have emphasized that, “it was the same people.”

It was the same people?

That is, when one religious group conquered another, new citizens weren’t hauled in to replace the old. Rather, the same inhabitants remained in place. Immediately or over time, most people got with the program and altered their beliefs.

To enter Iznik’s Hagia Sofia museum we walked down a half-flight of steps and paid seven Turkish Lira (about $3). The building, about the size of an elementary school gymnasium, had an earthy odor and its floor was covered with coarse gravel.

Near the entrance, the gravel had been swept away to reveal several faded mosaic panels.

A guide accompanied us, pointing out features of the church. We gazed at faint frescoes high in a cupola near the altar, walked around the spot where the dignitaries had gathered so many centuries ago, and viewed an area along the south wall that had once held a grave.

You can find Jesus

If you’re one of those too-cool-for-the-tour-I’ll-just-wander people like me.

On the north side of the building, we peered down through a protective glass pane over a window well. There in the dim light was a triptych that, according to an adjacent plaque, dated from the 11^th century.

This triptych featured three faces:  Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and John the Baptist.

In the fresco Jesus appeared wild and elemental, vastly different from the placid blond image I’d grown up with.

Painted in elegant golds, browns and blues still rich after ten centuries, he had thick, dark hair, huge expressive eyes that could grab you across a room, and a surprised-looking smile. In his left hand was a gilded book, and his right hand extended upward, proudly.

Was this Jesus? Yes.

It was one of those moments that unexpectedly gather together disparate emotions.  Standing in the damp little church, I thought back to my Midwestern childhood Sundays and their improbable link with this ancient, faraway church.

I thought of our current struggles to adapt to a foreign language and country, and our longing for friends and family. This primitive, animated Jesus, so close to his land of birth and neither airbrushed nor Anglicized, seemed to peer straight at me through all the centuries, saying. “Lo, I am with you always.” It reminded me of the more tender parts of my belief system, half-submerged just like the fresco.

I stood there holding back tears.

The new hobbies just keep on starting up

Knitting, Breaking Bad, and definitely cats. But way more.

Thereafter, historical sightseeing, much of it religious, became the focus of our stay in Turkey. A few months later, Turkish Muslim friends drove us up to St. Peter’s Grotto, set in the desolate cliffs outside Antioch. Gökhan and Burcu stood solemnly while we peered into the dim cave rooms of one of the first Christian churches. A year after that, we attended mass in the southeastern town of Mardin. In a country that discourages the use of languages other than Turkish, the pastor recited the gospel in Aramaic. We also visited the prophet Abraham’s birthplace, commemorated with a spectacular old reflecting pool surrounded by arched colonnades.

I was struck by how tenderly Muslims revered Christian sites, landscaping a large area around the tiny Ephesus house believed to be that of Mother Mary; answering visitor questions at St Peter’s Grotto; and even joining us on a two-hour climb to Sumela, an ancient Black Sea monastery.

Maybe Turkish Muslims were tolerant of Christianity because it was part of their heritage.

Your husband will start reading

“Listen to this!” Sandy exclaimed one February evening as he read the expatriate International Herald Tribune.

“The Church That Politics Turned Into a Mosque,” proclaimed the headline.

Due to actions in Ankara, the article said, Iznik’s Hagia Sofia museum had recently been converted back into a mosque.

No longer a museum? We stared at each other in disbelief.

What about all the Christian visitors who revered it and came to visit it each year? Sandy read parts of the article aloud, but I couldn’t fully absorb what he was saying, and grabbed the paper as soon as he finished. The museum had apparently closed in October, 2011. After modifications, a month later, it had reopened as a mosque.

Did this mean that people interested in Christian history were no longer welcome in Iznik? It seemed like our Turkish hosts were withdrawing the welcome mat.

And what had led up to this?

As I struggled to comprehend, it was the historical loss I mourned, not the loss of a church, which had, after all, occurred almost eight hundred years ago. I understood that the structure had been a mosque only decades ago, and I wanted to be fair, but I couldn’t help thinking that the building was more important to Christian history than to Islam. And then there were also our proprietary, not-so-rational feelings.

We had visited Iznik—our Iznik—three times now, even bringing our struggling-to-be-adult children.

It turns out that the story of Turkish secularization is complicated and fraught. For decades, the country’s more religious population has felt marginalized, not just philosophically, but also economically. According to Mustafa Akyol, columnist for Turkey’s Daily Hurriyet, for decades the Turkish Republic excluded devout Muslims from jobs, government contracts, and educational opportunities.

Mary Lee Settle wrote simply that, “Ataturk went too far with religion.”

Starting in the 1980s, however, the Turkish electorate began to choose Prime Ministers of a “mildly Islamic” bent. To everyone’s surprise, these periods of rule, including the current one, beleaguered as I write this, have been associated with economic growth. But as with any group newly flexing its political muscles, there has been overreach and payback.  This was probably what we were seeing in the Iznik decision.

Cultural struggles become close, relevant to you

In the past few years, Iznik had attracted as many as forty thousand tourists annually, the vast majority coming to see the museum.

After the  decision, Eurasianet reported that Iznik’s Hagia Sofia mosque was half-empty even after Turkey’s biggest Muslim holiday. The Herald Tribune polled Iznik residents, all Muslims, and quoted those who weren’t happy about the decision.

“We had just begun to make a few pennies from tourism,” a taxi driver lamented.

“We had nothing to do with the decision. We weren’t even asked,” a deputy mayor complained.

Another person said simply, “Historical sites should be kept as museums.”

I wondered what had happened to the fresco of Jesus.

We were expecting visitors from home and had touted Iznik as a highlight. Now we wondered if we should even go there. Mosques are carpeted wall to wall, CARPETED WALL TO WALL, people, and thus the Jesus fresco, located beneath floor level, would probably no longer be visible. And even if it were, how would I—or any tourist—walk in and begin searching for a representation of Christianity?

With over two thousand mosques in Istanbul, many of them distinguished and exceptionally beautiful, there would be no reason to drive three hours to visit a slapped-together mosque with modern fixtures, however ancient its outer shell.

When we wrote to our friends, however, they seemed open to a visit, remarking that Iznik seemed to have everything: “Christianity, Islam, capitalism, and politics.” I had to agree.

A romantic ending? (please read my conclusion)

So, we decided to return to the mosque. My husband secretly wanted the local lamb burritos and I wanted my Jesus.

Our visitors arrived in March and the four of us set out for Iznik on a splendid early spring day.

Snowmelt filled the creeks and tiny buds dotted the trees. At the entrance to the museum-turned-mosque, I was pleased to see the same guide as before. As mosque entry is always free, he no longer sold tickets, but welcomed us and again joined us in walking around the building.

An eighteen-inch-high brightly carpeted platform now extended from the south wall of the building. Carved into that wall was a mihrab, a niche indicating the direction of Mecca; and alongside it was a mimbar or pulpit, for the Friday speaker. A father and his young son were taking off their shoes in preparation for prayer.

But unlike other mosques, the carpeted area did not stretch to the other walls. Astonishingly, around the north, east and west edges of the building, a fifteen-foot perimeter of coarse gravel remained. And that was where all the items of Christian interest lay. The entryway mosaic. The east side with its cupola frescos, altar and little grave room.

And the window well, with the Jesus fresco.

We were standing in a functioning mosque that was also a museum of Christian history.

How had this come to pass?

Had hospitality toward those of us Muslims call People of the Book prevailed? Or had the decision been driven by business practicalities, a determination to follow the letter, but not the spirit of the Ankara ruling?

I would never know.

And so, for the second time, I was moved to tears in the Iznik’s Hagia Sofia.

This time it wasn’t an artist’s brushstrokes, but an abstract idea: that of religious tolerance. Spread out before us in gravel and carpeting.

Wiping a tear, I glanced over at Jesus, now facing the newly constructed worship area. His astonished expression now matched ours. But it was a good kind of surprise.

The kind that occurs only in the presence of a miracle.

p.s. I actually don’t have a Twitter, yet.

p.p.s. I started a WordPress blog to enter the Long Reads discussion. So thanks for reading, and let’s discuss! And thanks to my son for helping with the editing.

Sources:

1. Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor, Mark Wilson, Ege Yayinlari,2010.

2. The Church That Politics Turned into a Mosque, Susanne Gusten, New York Times, February 8, 2012.

The post I Met Jesus in a Museum & Other Reasons Everyone is Visiting Turkey appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.