morning, in the blue mosque

Morning never looked so magical as it did streaming through the curved windows of the mighty Blue Mosque, dancing off tiles and coiling around half and quarter domes. I always seem to be in the Sultanahmet area around prayer time, when the mosque is closed to tourists, but as I was accompanying a tour group of alumni from the now 100 year old Istanbul International Community School— of which I am also an alumnus, I got to set foot onto the well-worn red carpet of the mosque. When I was a little girl, the Blue Mosque could have leapt out of the pages of a fairytale— it was mythological; somewhere great heroes and heroines lived and loved. I did not grasp its religious purpose, but I felt its power and understood its holiness. While Rüstem Paşa Camii in Eminönü is by far my most favourite mosque in Istanbul for its intimacy and stunning tiles, it is impossible to deny the overwhelming beauty and magnificence of the Blue Mosque.