In the lobby of the Dergah Hotel. “Dergah” means Sufi monastary / meeting place. Planned to leave Konya last night after a long day of depressing email fallout from my family reacting to my having lied to them about being in Syria and Lebannon (I told them during that period I was just in far far south Turkey) and walking around watching other people shop in frenzied anticipation of the end of Ramadan festival Bayram.

Today Ramadan has ended! “Sheker Bayram Mobarak!” they congratulate each other as the host offers the guest a piece of Turkish delight or some other soft, chewy sweet. The bus I shoulod have leflt on last night was at 12 midnight and just a bit before at 10:30 I ran into Negar and gang and they took me to a sort of Dergah jam session with lots of Turks, Iranians, and a group of 30 Bulgarians with their spiritual master. Great rhythm on several shallow frame drums called “daf”, clapping, the Iranian Sufi named Hooshang sang and heart-rendingly played the reed flute called “ney,” Iranian women and Turkish ladies led everyone in singing hypnotic verses, extatic smiles on their faces bright and sweating. Old honorable men and pilgrims whooping it up – I had to stay.

At the climax I exited the dergah and ran down the street to change my bus ticket, moved my bag back to the Dergah Hotel, and returned to find that the jam session was over but FEAR NOT, following Hooshang we soon found ourselves first in the lobby of the hotel of the Bulgarians then at a concert in the basement of the Sema Hotel where several musicians played for a small crowd of pilgrims. One Kurdish Iranian man dressed in traditional clothes ate burning wood charcoal, in his extasy from the music stuffing these glowing coals into his mouth, huffing as puffing loudly like a blacksmith’s furnace. Other observers leaned over to me and said “he is in another world: he has gone to meet the Imam Ali and we have not brought him back yet.” He yowled and huffed like a cat desperate for her kittens, eyes vacant, periodically spitting a black and glowing ember on the floor.

Many of the people in the room had cameras, flashes popping, videos whirling. One slightly Indian-looking Iranian girl born from an Arabic Iranian man and an Isfahani woman sat next to me. She had grown up in London “in a Sufi family” and was super friendly – asked me what my astrological sign was, spoke of her lonliness, longing and difficulty in finding a mate. All this was said while I was listening, clapping, wathcing the music and events unfold. I appreciated her freindliness and hot her email but was not attracted to her. After that I spent several hours back in the lobby of Negar and gang (the Dergah Hotel) chatting in French, English, Turkish – struggling and enjoying with a variety of people until 5 AM when I retired.

All day today (starting at 2:30 PM) was spent in pitiful concentration efforts on the floor of the Rumi tomb – could not even breath 50 breaths in sets of 10 without my mind wandering. The atmosphere on the street was ablaze with delight as new clothes, snacking, drinking water from public fountains – all celebrating the emergence from a month of fasting. All the simple pleasures performed by the masses with such an air of appreciation and festivity, community. Inside shrine thousands of pilgrims moved through to pay their respect to Rumi, the desciples, the gorgeous calligraphy and rich walls and ceiling.

I stayed there against the wall, a sweet felling and tingling in my nerves, my body aching like usual and read from my Sufi book about charity, poverty, connecting with the devine and serving one another. I watched the feet of the pilgrims shuffling through, socks, slippers, shoes with plastic bags over them, so many patterns of small florals on fields of white, cream, black heads covered, families holding each other walking close, casting curious glances at all of the various people on the floor (like me).

I left there at dusk, everything outside looked exquisitely beautiful – I went to pray after airing out all of the mosque door guard’s feelings about George W. Bush, US war motivations, who did the NY Attacks and Mohammad as the last prophet. I listened patiently and nodded at the right times, he left happy and I went to pray. I felt praying like a Moslem was so easy compared to concentration, meditation – the wandering mind – the body movement of the namaz (the Moslem prayer sequence) keeps the engagement of the mind and releives the bodily aching of staying in one posture. During this prayer I asked for the breaking of the ice around my heart and a gushing over of gratefullness. Right now when I express gratefulness it usually is my mouth only. The wise man from Bodrum Ahmad said “good man says same thing with mouth and with heart.” “Mouth says one thing, heart another – bad man.”