Monday Evening Notes on the Real Jihad a Week Before Ramadan
The sun has set behind the modern high rise, but the horizon is pale pink and the sky is still blue. In Gaziantep everyone is going home. The muezzin will call the city to prayer. Middle aged women will look up into the sky turning purple like the flowers on their veils. Middle aged men, all dressed in black, will hurry home, some with bread under their arms. The tramway passes with students and professionals packed like uncooked spaghetti in a box, brittle, on the verge of being broken and boiled soft for a table somewhere. Most of the cars are factory white, because the aspirant class can not afford paint jobs. This colorless parade is broken by an ambulance siren; a few impatient car horns. Another tramway passes. The headlights come on but the traffic is still jammed on the tramway way, and another tramway passes packed with the macaroni class jammed behind its doors. It's only Monday. Spring seemed to arrive finally today. So I am watching from our balcony. I made it home. I feed my daughter noodles. My wife is working late. The pines and minarets point at the first stars. My faith is a meandering path. I’ve been walking home from work after growing fat this winter. Maybe the pandemic is ending, or we are forgetting about it. The war in Syria has ended or been forgotten about, and the war in Ukraine has been raging for weeks. Inflation is the talk around every evening cup of tea. There is still tea and sunsets and faith around here. That doesn’t preclude a fighting spirit. It’s always a struggle, in all our hearts, behind the sandbags of our egos and the soggy noodles of philosophy in the cracked bowls of ritual.