So after the Blue Mosque, I wound my way around back (it’s amazing how much kicked in that I remembered from my last visit here)… and made my way through a small cobblestone tunnel to the Arasta Bazaar. I said, I said, I said… that I was not going to buy a carpet. I bought a carpet. (It’s just a really small one – an Usak – for my powder bath.) Gorgeous colors – pix don’t do it justice. From there it just went downhill… Bought some stoles, some jewelry, a lamp, my requisite collectable cat… I really should shop for a living. I also caught a few minutes of a Whirling Dervish show and plan to bring Lee back tomorrow night to see it… 
So – what’s a Whirling Dervish? The Mevlevi (followers of Mevlâna Jelaleddin Rumî), or Whirling Dervishes, are basically a religious sect here in Turkey. (There are some legal/political issues around that, so this ‘order’ recreated themselves as a ‘cultural organization’.) Their worship service, the Mevlevi sema, has dervishes in long white dresses whirling ecstatically for a quarter hour at a time to the drone of ancient Islamic hymns. The sema derived from Rumî’s habit of occasionally whirling in ecstatic joy in the streets of Konya. I don’t know about you – but I always twirl in the streets when I get touched by the Holy Spirit. Anyway, there’s chanting and twirling… and it could put a jet-lagged girl to sleep…. 
But it’s sooooooo very Turkey, and quite cool to see.
I was just headed back up to the Hippodrome (a little after 8pm – sunset), when I heard it being broadcast over the loudspeakers… This low haunting chant… It wassssss… the most amazing thing. Having been in Bangalore so many times, I’m very familiar with the call to prayers that gets broadcast… This one – well the only way I can describe it is that it started out low…. And as it cresendo’d, the most incredible thing happened… Quiet. For you see… as the call ended, and the cannon blasted… 100,000 people stopped talking, and started eating for the first time in 16 hours. I didn’t even realize it was noisy – just the buzz of a big busy city… But immediately after the chant ended…. there was complete silence. I guess all those growling tummies really made some noise, huh?