Kimberly Ivany crouches on the floor as she partakes in the ceremonies at a Turkish mosque.

Courtesy of Kimberly Ivany, Ryersonian staff

I don't know if I was allowed to, but I took off my shoes, walked onto the middle of the floor, and started filming.

It was a Sunday afternoon in Istanbul. We had traveled there from Aarhus, Denmark, to film a documentary on the ever-present tug of war between religion and secularism in the country. Today, we were in the conservative district of Eyup at the Eyup Sultan Mosque.

Standing inside the mosque in my sock feet, I filmed close-ups, long shots and artsy side shots of the elaborate chandeliers, stained glass windows, and people sitting and praying on the kaleidoscope carpet below me. I was in complete working mode, and the camera lens was like a shield from reality. It was like I was watching a movie.

It was a few minutes later when I put down the camera that I realized the magnitude of where I was. 

I wasn’t sitting in my world religions class in Grade 11. I was actually in a mosque, in Turkey, seeing the Islamic culture with my own eyes.

As I stood there in complete awe, one of the security guards waved to me. I thought he was going to tell me to turn off the camera. Instead, he simply told me I had to cover my head.

I quickly went outside to where my colleague Marieke was waiting for me. I borrowed the scarf she was wearing and quickly wrapped it around my head before going back inside.

I pressed record again on my video camera, but I was ushered upstairs by the security guard to where all the women were sitting. It was almost 1 p.m. Prayers were about to start and I was no longer allowed to be on the ground floor with the men.

But I only realized this after I went upstairs.

At this point, I guess you could say I was trapped on the balcony, overlooking the floor where all the men sat, until the prayers were over.

Naturally, I filmed what I saw: an aged woman with her chin in her hand beside me, a young boy in a white suit sitting with his father below me, a closed Qur’an resting on the table behind me. 

But when the prayers started, I stopped.

Despite the journalist yelling in my head, I had to put my camera down.

All around me, in tidy rows, were women bowing up and down in time with the Imam’s words. Below me, the men were doing the same. I was surrounded by hundreds of people in motion. They were speaking under their breath and moving their hands and heads simultaneously as the Imam spoke into the microphone, his voice echoing through the mosque’s airy atmosphere.

I felt so foreign standing there. Who was I, a small, non-Muslim girl who couldn’t speak a word of Turkish, to have the right to invade such a holy space with a P2 video camera?

So then.

I joined in.

I followed the movements of the elderly woman beside me. I bowed my head, knelt to the ground, then stood again and clasped my hands together. I didn't know if I was doing it right, but I was doing it. I was praying.

When the prayers finished, the woman who I had looked to for guidance fixed my scarf slung carelessly over my head. She kept exclaiming in Turkish as she kissed my face and rubbed my arms. 

Other women around her were smiling, just like I was. Not a word of English was exchanged, but I was communicating with these women. I felt the most genuine sense of belonging as they spoke around me.

Before I headed back downstairs, the first woman handed me a blue, beaded necklace that she had been holding.

"Teshekular! Teshekular!" I said to her, which means “thank you,” in Turkish. "Can I keep these?"

She just kept talking in her own language, smiling, but I knew she meant yes.

I looked at the necklace as I walked down the winding staircase to the exit. To a stranger, these beads were just a meaningless and cheap commodity. But to me, they were a memory of the most radical and eye-opening hour in Turkey.

I'm not Muslim, but I am in awe of the deep sense of community and exclamation of raw faith that I witnessed during my time in Istanbul. It was a faith that was neither silent nor confined, but alive and in action.

It was a faith you could see.

It is so lovely, after all, to dance a prayer.