A Day Off with Mohammad (3)

The city of Bursa trails around all the hills and valleys splitting out from Uludag and it is good exercise walking in and out -- it feels like each one has its own town. Most tourists visit central Bursa so it is very quiet over and down the other side of the Gazi tombs. Except for the buses roaring past, spraying us with foul clouds. Walking down the hill, he asks if I am married. I tell him no, but I have a Turkish girlfriend. He asks if I also have a girlfriend in the US. I laugh, telling him, the one I have is enough. And him? He counts on his fingers one girlfriend for each town he has lived and worked in, which compared to most Turks is alot. It appears he is a rambling man, working random jobs from Van westward, searching for that perfect job and evidently a worthwhile girl.

Cold and hungry we enter the Muradiye complex -- originally built for the living sultan Murat II, complete with living quarters, harem, mosque, and hamam. The mosque and hamam are still in use by the public, but everything else serves as a giant mausoleum for the sultan's family surrounded by hedge gardens and cemeteries. Curiously one section of the cemetery is in good condition, whereas another section is in ruin with broken slabs of marble discarded and weeds overtaking long-empty tombs. "Jazz!" Mohammad points to an angel carved on a chunk of marble. Mohammad said this was the Christian section, left in disarray, while the up-kept section was Muslim. I can't verify this explanation, but the latter's tombs had turbans on the upright headstones, whereas those angels with Greek inscriptions seemed to be cast aside. Perhaps this was result of the Greek Christian-Turk population exchange and Islamic conversions of the past.

I suggest, again, food, but Mohammad asks to stop by the mosque first. He is crazy for camii I muse. This is true but when we enter I realize he wants to participate in the mid-afternoon prayers. I have never seen this before, always by chance entering mosques between one of the 5 prayer times. Mohammad leads me to a space in the back where I quickly and quietly sit on a stair. He joins the others who are standing, bending and kneeling at the calls of the Imam, in the front with a microphone. His calls, short melodic verses, with intermittent pauses with some men muttering things under their breath. One man runs up to the line of devotees, evidently late, and he looks like a child late for class and doesn't want to be noticed.