Minaret: Stone poetry

Shame on Switzerland. The Swiss finished up 2009 by banning the construction of new minarets. Switzerland is arguably the world's purest democracy -- every person's individual vote counts, and it's those votes that effectively determine policy. So the people really do rule, which makes this sad decision all the sadder: it is truly the Swiss people who have spoken.

I'm glad I've been to Switzerland several times and have taken in its astounding physical beauty, as I'd be hard pressed to book a trip to that Alpine land now. I'd feel I was supporting or at least turning a blind eye to intolerance -- not just random acts of intolerance that exist wherever there are humans, but mass, premeditated intolerance that will be written into the Swiss constitution. (France, please don't ban the burka or I will have to put you on my bad list, too.)

I've gazed at hundreds of minarets around the world -- in cities of all sizes, in dusty villages, desert outposts, mountaintop hamlets and seaside towns, in diverse countries on four continents. Many have been small and simple, some towering and ornate, and their age has ranged from just-built with funds collected by the citizens of a village to a thousand years old. They are invariably elegant.

I feel a quiet rush of peace when I see a minaret, and, when I've been lucky enough to hear the call to prayer that is a minaret's reason for standing tall and pointing heavenward, I feel doubly blessed.

I'll never forget the morning in Izmir, Turkey when Adam and I were awakened in a purple pre-dawn by multiple, simultaneous calls to prayer emanating from the dozen minarets we could see from our hotel room balcony. We stood on the balcony and tried to connect each call to the minaret that owned it. Izmir, site of ancient, biblical Smyrna, is built across broad hills, and the muezzins' calls bounced off the hillsides and reverberated through the city. It was a sublime moment, alone worth traveling halfway across the world.

Here are photos of a few of the minarets I've met: At top are the slender fingers of Istanbul's Blue Mosque and the Koutoubia in Marrakesh, Morocco.


At left, an Ottoman-era mosque sits in central Sofia, Bulgaria, and below, a richly-tiled prayer tower rises from the floor of a valley in Morocco's Atlas Mountains.

And here, the Qutb Minar, built in 1199. Rising 238 feet above the streets of old Delhi, it is the world's tallest brick minaret and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Bulgaria on my mind

There's a town in Bulgaria that took up residence in a tiny corner of my mind some 20 years ago and still lives there. Over the past two decades I've thought of it hundreds of times, the fairy tale town I looked down on but never entered.

I was in a speeding bus on a high, smooth highway, enroute from Sofia, Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania. I looked out the window and saw a magical, red-roofed town nestled between and climbing up hills covered in deep forest. I snapped one photo.

The sight of the town made me hold my breath, hoping that the highway we were riding on would curve down and to the left and that we would enter this beautiful place, if only to ride through it without stopping. That would be enough. To enter it and roll through some piece of it, so I could take it in up close.

But the bus kept speeding along the elevated highway, and the town was gone from my sight within a minute.

"What was that place?" I asked my busmates. Someone said, "Veliko Tarnovo."

Veliko Tarnovo, ancient town, capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, bursting with history and superb architecture and one of the foremost tourist destinations in Bulgaria.

I have never forgotten its name. I did not go there. But I know it's beautiful.

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Changing bus drivers in America

It's 8 AM on the East Coast, and I've just voted for Barack Obama. I've never felt so thrilled filling in an oval on a ballot form. I've never taken my right to vote for granted, but this time, I felt truly a part of the great democratic engine that will take us on a new and better journey. Our journey with George Bush has been an unmitigated disaster -- a series of wrong turns and crashes and breakdowns. A ride on a wayward bus driven by a fool with blinders on. (Or, were I using a different transportation metaphor, a train wreck.)

Today I cherished the act of voting because it gave me the power to help stop the bus, show the current driver the door, then welcome a new driver, one smart enough to stop driving in circles and to ask directions if he thinks we're on the wrong road.

Four years ago on election day, when the stakes weren't nearly as high as they are now, I still cherished my vote, and I posted this brief story to explain why:

A post before voting. I always get a little choked up when I vote because it lets me feel my freedom so directly. I've been to places where there is no freedom. Like Sofia, Bulgaria before the fall of communism. A woman on our tour went into the ZUM department store with her husband, confined by multiple sclerosis to a wheelchair. She started photographing the empty shelves in the store's grocery and produce sections. Armed guards rushed her and took her away for hours of interrogation, leaving her helpless husband alone in ZUM's basement. He spoke no Bulgarian, couldn't read or write in the Cyrillic alphabet, and was likely the only black man the passing shoppers had ever seen. He sat for hours right where he'd been left, until his wife returned. She'd been questioned, intimidated and accused of spying. Her film was confiscated. When she pushed her husband's wheelchair out into the street, a van pulled up alongside and a man jumped out and grabbed the woman, trying to rip her camera from her. The government police realized they hadn't finished the job. If the woman still had the camera, she could buy more film and continue chronicling the state's shortcomings. That was unacceptable.

There's a palpable feeling of marvelous, fresh, collective energy running through America today. No matter who wins, tomorrow we'll be on a new course. We and the whole world have been waiting years for this moment. Who knew getting a new bus driver could feel so good?

www.LoriHein.com

Bulgaria, back in the day

May 6 is Bulgarian Army Day, a major, fete-filled national holiday.

I have bad memories of the Bulgarian army. And the Bulgarian police. Bad memories of anyone Bulgarian in any kind of uniform wielding any kind of weapon. Or whistle.

It was 1985, four years before the fall of the Berlin Wall set in motion the revolutionary collapses of Eastern Europe's communist dictatorships, and I was on a two-week bus tour of Bulgaria, Hungary, and what were then Czechoslovakia and Romania. (Remind me to tell you about the Big Brother creepiness of Bucharest. I felt watched every moment, whether on the street or in my hotel room. The walls had eyes. My skin crawled, even in my sleep. Of the cities we visited, Bucharest was most chilling, and Sofia, Bulgaria ran a close second. Prague and Budapest were gay, beautiful havens in comparison.)

We had a free (only in the sense of no group activities planned) afternoon in Sofia. We'd been cooped up in a bus with bench seats and no bathroom for a week, so the few unscheduled hours felt like a gift, and everyone took off in his or her own direction.

I trotted off to see the Communist Party Headquarters building in central Sofia. The colossal red star atop the Stalinist wedding cake structure looked like the ones I'd seen in Cold War spy movies, and I stepped off the sidewalk into the cobbled square the building looked down on to take some pictures.

When I was smack in the middle, whistles started blowing. At me.

Pairs of glaring, uniformed men -- whether police or army I don't know -- lined the sidewalks on both sides of the square, blowing violently and waving their arms in aggressive "get out of there or else!" motions. Bad, blowing Bulgarians in black jodhpurs and boots, hats with black patent leather visors, and holstered (thank God) pistols.

I'd find out later (guidebooks don't tell you everything) that there were certain times of day when no one was allowed to cross the square in front of Party headquarters. Seems I'd picked one of those taboo times to make my lone, innocent way across the cobbles to get a few shots of the big red star. The guys with the guns and boots didn't like it, and they were going to make me pay. For a minute that felt like an hour, they played chicken with me.

I'd run toward a sidewalk, and when I'd nearly reached it, a pair of the nasties would whistle wildly and wave me off, back into the middle of the square. I'd head for the opposite sidewalk, and another pair would fire off a round of ear-piercing toots and shoo me back into the middle. Again and again. Finally, they let me step onto the sidewalk. When I reached the curb, I kept walking, fast, back to my hotel.

When I got there, I found I wasn't the only person with a close-encounter-of-the-police-state-kind story to tell.

While I was being humiliated in front of party headquarters, a married couple in our group had been suffering in the ZUM department store around the corner.

The husband was confined by multiple sclerosis to a wheelchair. As his wife pushed him around the cavernous place, she began photographing the empty shelves in the store's basement grocery and produce sections.

Armed guards rushed her and took her away, leaving her helpless husband in his wheelchair in the grim, gray basement, isolated and effectively alone. He couldn't communicate, as he spoke no Bulgarian and couldn't write in nor read the Cyrillic alphabet. And, because he was likely the only black man the passing shoppers had ever seen, they gawked and pointed and whispered. While his wife was enduring several hours of interrogation, the man sat, for all of those hours, in the exact spot where he'd been left. No one spoke to him, no one helped him.

Finally, the wife came to retrieve her husband. She'd been questioned, intimidated and accused of spying, and her film had been confiscated.

The couple left ZUM and went out into the street, thinking the ordeal was over. Then a van screeched up alongside them. A man jumped out and tried to grab the wife's camera. Seems the police realized they hadn't finished the job. If the woman still had the camera, she could buy more film, take more pictures of empty shelves...

Ahh, the bad old days in Bulgaria.

Today, of course, it's a happy democracy with a worldly citizenry and police who probably even help people. And ZUM? It's been converted into an upscale mall stocked with luxury goods.

www.LoriHein.com

Vote: It's all about freedom

A post before voting. I always get a little choked up when I vote because it lets me feel my freedom so directly. I've been to places where there is no freedom. Like Sofia, Bulgaria before the fall of communism. A woman on our tour went into the ZUM department store with her husband, confined by multiple sclerosis to a wheelchair. She started photographing the empty shelves in the store's grocery and produce sections. Armed guards rushed her and took her away for hours of interrogation, leaving her helpless husband alone in ZUM's basement. He spoke no Bulgarian, couldn't read or write in the Cyrillic alphabet, and was likely the only black man the passing shoppers had ever seen. He sat for hours right where he'd been left, until his wife returned. She'd been questioned, intimidated and accused of spying. Her film was confiscated. When she pushed her husband's wheelchair out into the street, a van pulled up alongside and a man jumped out, trying to grab her camera. Seems the police realized they hadn't finished the job. If she still had the camera, she could buy more film...