29th July 2010, Istanbul. Here we are, today we are walking among the Turks

After the refugee camps of Baku and the surprises of a beautiful city, the wonders of Tbilisi, crossing the red line to get to Abkhazia, after the beauty and amazement on Armenian land, our friendship trip had to leave the beloved trans-Caucasian region.

Some of the protagonists of this adventure said good bye in Armenia, the students, Dato, Anna, Guy and Aleko, but also other precious friends that were essential for the balance of our team.

The others, instead, have continued from the Caucasian mountains and their proud men with their fur hat and dagger, until the land of the ancient Ottoman and Byzantine Empire.

We have arrived until here.

To capture the real coordinates of our distance from the small medieval village of Rondine and from our world we should be able to feel simultaneously the life of all the peoples we have leaped over during this trip. To fell Turkey completely, we should be able to perceive in a moment the multitude of existences nested in the most hidden corners of its cities.

Istanbul does it for us and shows us all peoples with just one look.

Istanbul is the magnificence of mosques, it is the smell of fish in the streets, the cob and nuts carts, the stalls, Hallah’s numerous eyes that stare at the passers-by on the road, the shoes cleaners, the chants coming from the mosques: a never-ending coming and going of life.

THE PATRIARCH AND THE MUFTI

Three steps are heard beyond the two doors on the right and on the left of a red armchair: we are waiting for him excited. He’s the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

His welcoming and humble hands show the strong and inextinguishable desire to meet others. You can understand it from how he cares about the encyclopedia of people that he has met, the memory of each friend. You can understand it from how he welcomes affectionately the greetings that Pope Benedict XVI warmly asked us to give him.

Bartolomew I is a quiet and thoughtful man that wants to give us personally, one by one, the small images of Christ and the chocolates and wants Magomed, a Muslim student, to see the Koran that he keeps in his study next to the Bible.

The reciprocity of the friendship between these two religions in Istanbul is demonstrated a few hours later when Sabri Demir, the vice Grand Mufti, welcomes our delegation.

For millions of years, he said, mosques, synagogues and Christian churches have existed together in harmony in Turkey. The pride for the achievement of inter-religious integration in his country is reflected in his pleased look when talking to our students of the International Hall of Residence and comparing them to the different and beautiful flowers of a garden where it’s impossible to chose the most beautiful, hoping that Rondine’s experience will soon spread to many other parts of the world.

AZ