In Turkey: A Rain Dance

Sharp minarets pierced the pregnant sky, where clouds hung low and gray. I breathed in, and the air was metallic. Any moment, it would rain.

Realizing I had no coat or umbrella to protect my brand new camera, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque would not only be my next stop, it would also be my refuge. Wrapping the camera in my sheer summer sweater, I pushed up the stairs and against the crowd spilling out from the north side of the courtyard. Inside, tourists and locals had cleared the expansive space, and were huddled under surrounding domes and arches.

I made my way to the entrance of the mosque, where men offered visitors plastic bags for their shoes. Remembering that tourists were oft turned away for showing too much skin, I risked the camera and pulled on my cardigan. It stuck to me in the late May heat.

An ominous rumble unfurled, prompting the line behind me to lurch forward. Inside the mosque, my eyes searched blindly, adjusting to the darkness.

And then, the skies opened. Outside, the rain proclaimed victory in tinny sheets; inside, the mosque’s ceiling arched upward, aching blue like a clear spring day. A vast prayer hall breathed out before me, its red floral carpet brought to life by hundreds of hanging lights. Stained glass windows peered to the heavens. In the hushed silence, heads bowed in reverence to a higher power, but also to the beauty of the space.

As I neared the central dome, I came to a wood fence partition. A bold-print sign warned: “Visitors are kindly requested to stay behind this line.” It took me a moment to realize that this mandate must also apply to women: every person beyond this point, in the main prayer space, was male.

Except for one. A pretty little girl, not more than five, was flitting across the carpet. Wearing a red floral dress, she would have blended right into it had it not been for her long brown hair and unmistakable laughter. She twirled back and forth, putting on a show for her father and grandmother, who silently cheered her on from the other side of the partition. She tiptoed around columns nearly three times her wingspan; she put her hands over her eyes for a game of hide-and-seek.

Remarkably, onlookers and men who were praying did not seem to mind. Instead, they marveled – laughed, even -- at her unbridled glee. She had somehow turned dancing into its own form of prayer.

It didn’t take long for me to recognize that this was a rare moment in time. In just a few years, her long hair would likely be covered, and she would stand on the other side of the partition with the older girls and women. But for now, she was free as she could ever be, her tiny feet pitter-pattering across the prayer hall like rain.