By Phil Cousineau
A white crescent moon passes behind the long slope of Sultan Ahmet’s mosque, glazing ancient Istanbul with silver light. The medieval stone archway in the pine-bowered garden frames the six needle-shaped minarets and twenty-four blue tiled domes like a border in an illuminated manuscript.
In and out of the god-source dark night great white streaks of seagulls fly around the minarets and domes as if retracing the arabesque patterns painted on the mosque.
Near the jasmine-scented garden walls a peacock cries like a sleepless baby, a cry, the ancient Sufis believed, for the soul to dance. From the distant cafes along the labyrinthine lanes of the old city echoes the percussive sound of slapping dominoes and the haunting melodies of Turkish folksongs that crackle on old radios.
In that deep pool of listening, I heard the dark consonants of long-forgotten tongues, and the sultan’s horses scraping prayers on old cobblestones wet with rain.
It was long ago that this would happen again.
