the blue mosque

two black wooden doors meeting in an arch lead you through the outer wall of the blue mosque. one door is open, one is closed. the chain used to hold them shut at night hangs unattached. it is a grey stone outer wall.

there are green wet bushes and green wet grass between the outer and the inner walls, and in the flowerbeds there are yuccas but no flowers yet. the inner wall is in front of you and raised up. stone steps before you lead to a door going through. rising up in front of you are minarets. there are two on the forward corners of the inner walls. two more minarets behind make a square. that square is the courtyard and the inner wall is its perimeter. two more minarets make another square. that square is the mosque itself, behind the courtyard. round to the right there is a row of marble seats and brass faucets, and coat hooks, in a little corridor cut into the stone. there are big old trees that are not in bloom.

you step through the inner wall under an arch that is geometrically carved. the threshold is cut from white marble and thousands of footsteps have rounded the edges down and worn them smooth. inside the door is a star pattern done in black stone cut into white stone tiles. there are walls beside and behind you. the mosque rises up in front of you. there is a massive arched dome in the centre, bisected into two smaller domes, and each of those bisected again, like a rivulet of liquid metal, running down. at the top of each dome, gold crescents. in each wall of the courtyard there are twelve wood doors with brass fittings and patterns of rectangles and squares cut in. per wall there are twelve columns that support a roof that covers your head. the outsides of the columns are filthy black with pollution. the insides of the columns are bright white. geometric designs in circles on the ceiling over you. the rain is falling and the sound of water pouring off the eaves echoes in the courtyard.

everyone snaps the same picture as they come in. two guards patrol, smoking.

now starts the call to prayer. it is impossibly amplified. in the enclosed courtyard is it almost too loud to bear. it is men, young men singing. how does religion make young men like me feel, for example, righteous indignation? quiet, quiet. the marble tiles are cracked in many places and the water pools where they are sunken. a bird overhead. i can see my breath and the falling rain. then the cry is done and again silence, echoing silence, and the sound again of running water, falling water.

you have to take off your shoes before you go in to the mosque itself. you walk over turkish-looking carpets made from woven plastic, and disposable. if you are a woman you have to wear a scarf but some women do not. you go in through the side entrance.

the first thing you see: an enormous pillar twelve feet across, carved from grey stone. plush carpet the colour of red and yellow spices stretches out all the way in front of you. your field of view: there is no ceiling that you can see. the far walls are too distant to feel like they hedge the vast space. the walls beside you and behind you are beyond the angle of what you can see. no impression of a ceiling. there is nothing in the whole empty space except for that pillar and the richness of the plush carpet that moves under your toes.

the domes above your head float up forever. the central dome sits on four stone pillars like the one near you. you can follow it straight up with your eyes and you have to lift them all the way up, then you tilt your head back, all the way back and still you are not looking at the peak, so you even lean back and then far above your head you see the eight small domes that join into four and come together into one, the lines all meeting at the very top and all inlaid with gold script, and covered from edge to topmost apex with flowers and vines done in green, blue and red paint. from the underside of the domes hang innumerable thin wires leading your eye back down, and from which hang black ironwrought chandeliers holding lights in glass mantles. once these would have been oil lamps. in the horizontal plane you see a band of stained glass windows, flat bottoms, teardrop tops, wraps around the whole of the structure. this is above a stone walkway supported by a row of arches and columns, and with a handrailing carved in a geometric star pattern out of sheets of white marble. above the windows are blue tiles, blocks of them the same pattern, blue birds, blue flowers, blue leaves, blue bulbs, blue stars, blue hexagons. to fill the spaces under the cupolas above you there are round panels of calligraphy, gold on blue and black. there are no images at all of people or angels, no illustrations of scenes from stories.

the carpeted space is cut in half by a wooden railing. only worshippers can cross, and only the men -- the space for women, labelled in english too, is in a small wood-panelled room at the back where the sunlight floods in through big windows. the carpet is infinite dustyred, with a seamless pattern of blue and green flowers and vines enwoven. on the distant walls there are panels of intricate script. at the front of the mosque there is gold.

there is no echo. people's cellphones ring on the tourists' side of the wooden railing. there is exactly one blue tile missing.

the overall impression is: my eye forever tracing up the columns, up up to the topmost central dome, the space reserved for the most exalted calligraphy, words i cannot hope to read. i am duly impressed.