And the White Horse Looked On

Posted By Grim

Lieutenant G, a scout cavalryman who enjoys great respect here for his literary skill as well as his work, writes from Iraq:

Augustly, it shoots out of the Babylonian dust to defy the sandstone skyline. Surrounded by a haphazard maze of tiny homes and shops lacquered in grime, a sea green minaret sits on top of the building like a crown. It has overseen more easy wars and more fragile peaces than any human being could ever fathom, even in this post- oral history era. The mosque stands as proudly today as the day it first became a place of worship, many dawns ago.

The sound of a loudspeaker’s hollow echo rolls over Anu al-Verona from the mosque. It is the early morning prayers of the Salah. My interpreter, Biggie Smalls, often translates these words for me while we’re out in sector and sometimes joins in to pray for us himself; admittedly, it has taken some time to not feel threatened by these austere, foreign chants unleashed in Arabic. I justify this visceral reaction by comparing the prayers to certain passionate sermons I remember from back home, spoken in words I understood, but emotions that I did not. Spiritual cadences from the heart uttered in any language will sound menacing to a stranger. With my terp’s help however, I’ve come to appreciate the tranquility offered in the simple repetitiveness of some Muslim prayers.

Meanwhile, the literary editor of The New Republic -- a publication whose reporting section has enjoyed scant praise from BlackFive.net -- writes from America:

For a long time I did not hear the beauty of church bells; or more accurately, I did not wish to hear it. They sounded only like Christianity, which in my early years was a vexing triumphalist sound--the pealing of history, from which my honor as a Jew required me to recoil. When the tintinnabulations of the Church of St. Francis Xavier on Avenue O reached my ears, they brought the message that I was a member of a minority....

I was loitering in the magnificent little cloister at Magdalen College. It was a late afternoon in an Oxford autumn, and the yellow spears of the waning sun were landing in the severe stone geometries of the place and striking the walls like friendly lightning. Suddenly I heard the harmonies of a choir rehearsing evensong--a piece by Byrd, I later learned--in an adjoining chapel. Fixed by the lights and the sounds, I was overcome[.]

According to the story, St. Vladimir converted Russia to Christianity because of his emissaries' reports of their visit to the Hagia Sophia.  He is said to have consulted with Muslims and Jews as well, but it was that "Christian beauty" that convinced him.

I have my own -- strong -- opinions on the relative values of the various religions, and am a partisan:  but I understand what these two men are saying.  I've also heard the calls to prayer, and wondered at them.  For a while, last autumn, we were getting mortars shortly after the end of the curfew on a regular basis.  The morning call to prayer, just after the curfew was lifted so that people could get to those prayers, was like a warning.  Yet, if to me they were a warning, and to the insurgent a signal, there were thousands in Baghdad for whom that same mosque's song was only what Lt. G. describes: a soothing moment in a hard life, a time to welcome the dawn and pray that today will not be terrible.

Lt. G says, "How did I help the counterinsurgency today? God only knows." 

Perhaps.

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Comments

[jordan]

I recall my nephew's remark that he missed hearing the call to prayers while home on leave. Five times a day, every day, has got to leave an impression.

[defendusa]

And I think most of us have those emotions in regard to the bells and taking the time to see and listen- but the tools to describe those thoughts I do not have...that was awesome and describes how I felt walking to church on Saturday nites and knowing that by the time I got to Maple, the bells would be ringing... Goosebumps for the good read! If you feel it in your heart, you feel it no matter where or what the sound of the call is. Indeed.

[douglas]

When a student, I was in Turkey for a few weeks. It's less pervasive there, but you here them. I always found them eerily beautiful. I never had trouble remembering that they were prayers to the same God I believed in, even if we disagreed on his message.

But then, I didn't have to worry about mortar shells falling on me.

[douglas]

Doh! That's hear not here. Long day.

[Grim]

Yeah, that makes a big difference, I think, in your perception of the religious symbols.

I never had a similar problem while living in China, where I found the Buddhist temples to be beautiful, and could find nothing but admiration for the monks. It takes real courage to be a monk in China. It wasn't that long ago that monks were in for some serious pain from the Communist government. It's true that now, things are very much better -- but there is absolutely no guarantee that things will _remain_ better. What changed overnight, can change back overnight.

Still, these men were declaring themselves and devoting their lives to the pursuit of religious truth. I admired them greatly, and still do. The alien nature of the ritual never struck me as bothersome in the slightest.

[Grim]

Somewhere, in one of my photo albums, I have a picture of one of those temples. It was crafted in the Southern Song dynasty, and had some really astonishing stonework. The photo was taken from above, on the ridge of a nearby mountain, so that you could see the open space before the temple as well as the building itself.

The monks had put up a table in that space, with an umbrella to provide shade. The umbrella read: PABST BLUE RIBBON BEER.

[Grim]

I suppose I should say -- this was my first encounter with the prayers being sung from mosques, but not at all my first encounter with Islam. In college, I knew quite a few Muslims from Pakistan; and again in China, where a lot of African Muslims travel for business and education purposes; and one of the groomsmen in my wedding was a Muslim, a friend of mine from the British army.

It's only been since 9/11 that I've been having any negative feelings towards its symbols, of the type the New Republic author describes having had towards Christianity -- and the mortars probably didn't help, either. Still, like Lt. G., I was also struck by the importance of remembering the good -- not letting the bad actors capture the religion, as they would like to do, or make it harder to protect the good people who do live in Iraq.

His mother, by the way, appears in the comments to his post with a very wise citation. It's no wonder he turned out to be a fine young man.

[Sig]

I always expected the call to prayer to sound like it does in the movies--wailing, haunting, alien, yet beautiful. And it sometimes is.

In some of the crapholes we were visiting in Afghanistan, however, I discovered that premium call-to-prayer talent must flock to the prestigious mosques, because we heard a lot of Afghanistan Idol rejects in some of those towns. Still, I tried to take it in the spirit it was offered.

Sig

[Deltabravo]

I lived a block up from a mosque and behind a girls school in one of those countries. Even the Circassian neighbor across the street complained that the mosque went off more than the alloted times per day. Nothing like being awakened at o-dark-hundred to the sound of howling winds and the loud call to prayer. I swear they played a record each time because I could hear the scratchiness of it. It never varied, nor did the voice. Then at 0730 the girls school would loudly play the national anthem for the whole neighborhood and the shepherds I suppose, and then the morning announcements in Arabic. Loudly. So I could hear inside my house. If you weren't awake by then, you certainly were afterward.
Ahhh, good times...

[douglas]

"The monks had put up a table in that space, with an umbrella to provide shade. The umbrella read: PABST BLUE RIBBON BEER."

Ha! All it needs now is Dennis Hopper!

Sig- Oh, that's gotta be painful.

I have to admit, I've always been curious to see if I could somehow go through a Muslim prayer ritual, from the ablution to the prayers themselves. The ritual always intrigued me, and I guess as a Catholic, didn't seem so completely foreign (the concept of the importance of ritual anyway).

[Deltabravo]

By the way, Grim, thanks much for the heads up on LT G's blog. Now I'll never get anything done. He has a gift! Fascinating reading! Now he's one of my bookmarks.

[RonF]

I've been a nominal Christian for much of my life. But a few years ago, I got talked into joining a local parish's choir (I'm their only tenor). It took being part of the music to awaken some spirituality in me.