Beach photos and the supermoon

A few days ago the full moon of Ramadan rose over the darkened houses of my neighbourhood as I was walking to the beach.  It was a supermoon this year, at its closest point to the earth.  It hung in the sky like a great gold coin.

The Supermoon rises over houses in Olvera, in the southern Spanish province of Cadiz, July 12, 2014.
REUTERS/Jon Nazca

The supermoon over Oman.  This image has been circulating on Whatsapp.

More moon photos: NASA; Reuters

I have been bored lately.  I can't even really say I'm bored, as I have plenty to do.  I work, and translate, and write fiction, and read nearly a whole book a day.  But I'm restless and distracted and so I've taken to walking to the beach every day even though it's a tad hot in the afternoon and there are men in the street at night.  It beats sitting at home chewing on the furniture.  I feel restless at the beach too, but at least there are dead things to photograph (does anyone want to see?  I can post pictures), and after an hour of walking at least I'm tired and somewhat less restless.  And 4pm during Ramadan is the perfect time to go to the beach!  I usually have it all to myself.  The soccer players don't come out to jog until 6pm.

Portuguese Man of War

Seagulls at low tide.

Mosque behind a palm grove.

Running the pump to fill up the falaj.

A fishing boat.

Iftar in Sama'il

I went out to Sama'il with the family of a friend for iftar.  It had rained that afternoon and there was standing water all over the roads, so not all of the family members were able to make it to their grandmother's house for iftar.  Sometimes there were wadis in the way.

I wasn't able to take any pictures, we were in a hurry to get there before maghrib was called, so I'll borrow someone else's.  This is the largest thread I've seen of pictures of rain and clouds (source).

Sama'il fort, which I saw from a distance:

source

Sama'il is in Dakhiliyya province, about 40 km from Muscat, and Wikipedia tells me it has a population of about forty thousand.

source

I do at least one embarrassing thing every time I eat at someone else's house.  This time, I bit off half a fresh bone-in herring and chewed.  And chewed.  And chewed.  And then my friend's mom leaned over and showed me how to split the fish open and pull out the spine fringed with little bones before eating it.  It was really obvious I'd never seen a herring before that wasn't pickled or canned. 

Dreaming: Ice-Cream

All I remember now is that people were pointing at me and saying I was a huge ice-cream cone.  I may have actually been a huge swirly soft-serve ice-cream, but I'm not sure anymore.

It's hot and dusty and often late at night in Ramadan I walked down to the baqalah and got an ice-cream. 

You can get a good one for ten to thirty qirsh, a vanilla bar coated in brown chocolate-like product or a tube of fruit sherbet.  They're not real ice-cream, they're milk and vegetable oil and fillers, but we're used to it.  Everything in this country is a cheap imitation, unless you're rich, but it's been so long since we've tasted the real thing that we wouldn't recognise it any more.  It's cold and it's sweet and it's affordable and that's all we wanted.

Ramadan's over now, and I think the midnight ice-cream runs are too. 

Walk like a lady

TW: rape, victim blaming.

Our dorm's curfew is eight thirty pm in the summer, but I got permission to go to taraweeh prayers at the masjid across the street during Ramadan. I'm the only one in the building who goes. Taraweeh ends around eleven pm. The dorm supervisor usually calls me at ten thirty to ask why I'm not back yet, but I'm in the masjid and I'm praying so my ringer's turned off. She knows perfectly well where I am and what I'm doing.

Instead of going to taraweeh today, I went to the souq and bought food. Because I had none, and nothing is open until after ishaa, and I'm diabetic. I eat or I die.

It was a Saturday evening during Ramadan, so I waited a long time for buses, and I walked a long ways. Some of the streets in the souq were dead, nothing open, and some were packed wall-to-wall with people and cars. Most of the vendors wanted twice the usual prices. I sat at the mujamma'a for half an hour, waiting for the bus to fill up with passengers and leave.

So it was quarter after eleven when I got home. The dorm supervisor and some of the girls sit on the main floor (the third floor) smoking and talking and watching muselselaat (soap operas) and watching the stairs. Nobody gets by unnoticed.

They stopped me on my way up the stairs, dead tired and loaded down with vegetables, and asked me, with obvious suspicion, how many raka'at I prayed this time. I told the truth. I went to the big masjid in the souq, against the rules and without permission, and prayed the minimum number of raka'at, and then bought food. They berated me for breaking the rules. I don't think that people who don't pray or practice their supposed religion have any business criticising me for doing halaal things.

The dorm supervisor said that she was about to bolt the door, and if I was any later, she would have locked me out.

I believe she would lock me out; it's common practice in dormitories. Any girl who stays out late is obviously bad, and deserves what she gets. And the dorm supervisors know that I don't recognize their authority or abide by their rules. I've got it coming.


Basically, she gave me a choice between death by diabetic coma, and a shallow grave in the desert.


Groups of men hang around in the parking lots outside our building. I've been surrounded and attacked several times in this area, coming home from work in the evening. I fended them off with rocks and blows and shouting. I guess they weren't that determined, and Allah was with me.

I don't carry a knife anymore, and I know it's stupid and I'm putting my own safety at risk, but if I was armed I would stab the next man who touched me. I don't think I would be able to stop. And I don't think I'd be able to live with myself after that.

When I told the dorm supervisor, she said they assaulted me because I was afraid. Right, because fear totally causes gang rape. Other women said it was my own fault for being outside. Or for wearing colour. Or for having pretty eyes. Here's a tip, folks: nothing women do or don't do causes rape. Men raping causes rape. Society blaming the victim and not the attacker perpetuates rape.

I'm conscious of the men eyeing me, and I'm aware that I'm not safe, but I'm not afraid. I hold my head up and walk like someone you do not want to mess with. Women tell me to walk like a lady, slowly with small steps, don't draw attention, don't make men desire you. I don't care. Meekness gets you nothing but abuse in this world. The next man who gropes me will lose a nut, and people can think what they like about it.

Eyüp Sultan a second time

On the last night of Ramadan, we went to Eyup Sultan masjid (this is the second time I’ve been there). It reputedly holds the tomb of one of the Sahabah, and a footprint of the Prophet (salallahu alayhe wa sallam). It certainly contains the tombs and graves of many Ottoman emperors and officials.

Eyup Sultan is always busy, but on that night the courtyard, the paved square outside the gates, and the nearby streets were thronged with people, milling about and jockeying for spots big enough to lay down mats.

My host’s large family somehow scored a spot inside the courtyard near the relics, and we ate pizza and orange drink after the Maghrib athan and then prayed inside.

It is not unusual to see trees like these in masjids and historic sites in Istanbul, often over 500 years old.

People line up to see the tomb of the Sahabi (radiallahu anhu) and the footprint of the Prophet Muhammad (salallahu alayhe wa sallam).

After praying Maghrib, the whole family hiked up a cobblestoned path up the side of a very large hill next to the masjid, overlooking the Golden Horn. From a distance, this hill looks like a huge jumble of white blocks and trees – it is covered with tightly packed marble tombs dating from Ottoman times to the present, with trees planted among them here and there, and threaded with tiny footpaths trodden by all the people who visit the tombs. It was very dark, and all the surfaces were covered with worm-like centipedes as big as my fingers. It was a little creepy.

Up near the top of the hill was a brightly lit cafe, where people sat at little tables next to the tombs, smoking and drinking sweet tea. Cable cars ran up the side of the hill, and the passengers took an elevator up to a cobbled viewpoint overlooking the cemetery, the Bosphorus, and the Asian side of Istanbul across the water. The city and the two bridges between the continents were brightly lit and very beautiful. People took turns standing on a stool to look through a telescope at the city, and had a good laugh when my turn came and I just stood on the ground below the stool – at 5’5 I'm taller than a lot of people here.



Up at the top of the hill was a small masjid, a tea shop, and an ancient hand-pumped well purported to be ‘like Zamzam,’ having healing powers. People were lining up to pump water and drink it out of a tin cup on a chain, but I didn't drink because I didn't want to risk getting sick.

My we sat around outside the masjid drinking tea and well-water, and then all walked back down through the cemetery.

There are some gorgeous photos of people in the masjıd courtyard here, and some interesting epitaphs from tombstones here (I don't understand Turkish well enough to translate them).