The call to prayer cuts through the hot night air, echoing off the walls of Istanbul. Other mosques pick up the adhan, howling like wolves: Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar. God is great. The sky is full of swirling incantations, then falls silent.

The devout begin to pray.

The soul of Turkey is torn between the sacred and the secular. No where is this more evident than at the Aya Sophya.

When Istanbul was Constantinople, the capital of the eastern Roman empire and then Holy Roman Empire until the Ottoman’s captured it in 1453, the Aya Sophya was for a millennium the greatest church in Christendom. The Ottomans turned it into a mosque – for a time, the biggest in the Islamic world. When Kemal Ataturk founded the republic of Turkey, he made it a museum in 1935.

Visitors today gaze in awe at this impossibly beautiful space, with its majestic dome belittling the greatest of egos. On the walls, the face of Christ emerges through the peeling paint of Arabic verses from the Qu’ran.

Across a small park is the splendid Blue Mosque. Simpler than the Aya Sophya, its clean beauty fosters a sense of the divine. Survivor’s tip: the Blue Mosque is also cool, and therefore extra enjoyable on a sweltering Istanbul afternoon.

Even more common than the five-times-a-day call to prayer is the call to buy carpets. Really, it’s astonishing. You can walk along with your little backpack and crumpled Lonely Planet, and everyone in Turkey will try to sell you a carpet. “Hey lady!” if you’re a lady, “My friend!” if you’re a man. Trust me, anyone who says that is not your friend. They want to sell you a carpet. “I’m backpacking!” you may protest, “I have no room for your very lovely carpet.” They won’t believe you. They think you have hidden compartments in your backpack. Hidden compartments that need carpeting.

Considered buying a carpet and carrying it with you at all times, to show that all your floor-covering needs have been met.

Strangely enough, the place to go to escape the hustle is the Grand Bazaar. Tucked into a labyrinth near the university, don’t even try to find anything amid these endless alleys and eclectic shops. Whatever you want is there, but you’ll only find it if you don’t look for it. Just trust me on that.

Allow yourself a few hours to get lost here (and set a firm meeting point outside of the bazaar if you ever want to see your travel companions again) and just disappear. If something pretty catches your eye, play it cool, like it’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen, and barter for it. In Turkey,

it is a point of honour to never pay full price for anything. I bartered for a fine white shirt; it went like this:

Shop owner: “It’s 15 lira.”

Me: “I’ll give you 10.”

Him: “It’s 15 lira.”

Me: “Okay then.”

Well, he did throw in a refreshing glass of water.

An absolute must-see are the Whirling Dervishes, the spinning sages of Sufism, Islam’s mystical branch.

Istanbul’s train station, the terminus of the Orient Express, hosts a performance most evenings. Held in a room off the main platform, this is an unlikely place to witness an ancient spiritual ritual.

To droning, strangely arrhythmic music, the sema begins. The dervishes enter in long black robes, symbolizing their worldly tombs, and tall conical heads serving as tombstones. The verses of the Qu’ran and kettle drum, the dervishes drop their black robes – and earthly attachments - to reveal lose white skirts. The dervishes circle three times, and then start spinning. As they pick up speed, the right arm rises up, the left falls down, and they turn on one foot, swirling in constellations around each other.

Watching this intimate ecstasy in your plastic chair feels voyeuristic, but the sema has always been a public ceremony for Muslims and non-Muslims, probably for just that reason.

The perfect way to end a day in Istanbul is to take a ferry ride on the Bosporus. There are tourist boats, but stick to the ordinary ones. You’ll jostle with commuters who don’t find anything about it romantic, but you’ll also witness the endless parade of entrepreneurs pitching their goods to a captive audience. (My favourite was the orange squeezer that sucked you out a nice glass of juice with no mess.)

As a bonus bit of coolness, this ride actually carries you from Asia to Europe.

An even more romantic way to end your evening in Istanbul is to misread the ferry schedule on the European side, and to then take a late-night long walk back to Asia over the Galata bridge.
At least, I thought it was romantic.

First published in The Daily News July 28 2007