Rereading one of my favorite books. While also reading the book I bought yesterday. There are a lot of overlaps. Joyful. Good omen.

Find Muhyiddin Sekur, the writer, on Instagram. Decide to write him a message. As I type the message I look up. The woman in front of me has a shirt saying “Good things come to those who expect it.” Which is an important part in the book I’m rereading.

Changed hotels. Changed wifi. Elasophia hotel, wifi code: elahotel2023. TAYAHATUN FLOOR, wifi code: 3333344444. Tayahatun Looby, wifi code: 33334444

My new friend Hasan, the hotel manager, a former wrestler from Azerbaijan, tells me if the cigarettes are on the table, everyone can take them. Another shirt walks by: “Quit mind, calmer days”

Get lured into one of the many shops selling sweets in the old town. Don’t know why, but this clerk waving me in seems nice. Surrounded by Turkish delight I learn that he is Tunisian. We are almost the same age. Within a few minutes the conversation is about Faust. Then he starts talking about pegasus and other winged animals. From there we move to duality in this life, reality or states of existence. How that forms this life. And that god is undivided and so is All. He tells me there is time, only because of memory. His name is Mohammed Cherni and he is a writer. He wrote a book called ‘White light’.

I wander the city. Which combines ancient and new. All these different time periods overlapping into what the city is today. Periods of immense wealth, with carved marble everywhere. Centuries of street vendors. Roofed market halls with all kinds of merchandise. Churches next to mosques. Ancient greek temples as a foundation on which the mosque is build. Layers upon layers. All these centuries of ideas and choices that became physical. Here we put a road. We will use these stones. Two centuries later a lamp post is added. A bracket is screwed in the 3rd century wall to lock a food cart run by a descendant of an ottoman prince. Throwing modern currency at a carved head in an underground water basin predating the roman empire. Of which we can buy plastic replicas glued on magnets to put on a fridge. Ideas and choices, intentions, actions and coincidences in all these centuries mixed into this cocktail called Istanbul.

Visit the Mevlana Museum. Which is an old place for sufi practice. Now a museum. But still used sometimes. Beautiful wooden floor. But I learn there is only being practised about once a month. After some lunch with great sucuk ekmek en corba. Some ayran and a few M&M’s on a napkin as a desert. Get a reply from Muhyiddin Sekur on instagram. They tell me they are not him, but they help with the account. They tell me to go to the Cerahi Tekke and that they have meetings on Monday and Thursdays there. Just like the security guard said.

Havesome tea with Murat, the shoeshiner. A man comes up and wants to buy inlay soles. I confirm the quality as I just bought them myself the day before. He speaks french. His name is Furkan and he lives in Strasbourg and is the Imam of a mosque there. He was in Istanbul to get surgery and be with his family. We go out for coffee. When it’s time to part, we want to give each other a gift. After some negotiation we decide we’ll give each other some sweets from the market. On the way there we meet some people of the Naqsbandi sufi order. Which is a very large order. Also the guy I met in Berlin is part of this order. I have been trying to get in touch with the chapter in Germany for months, but always got the answering machine. The men are giving out leaflets. Furkan translates as I ask them some questions. But to all they just answer “convert to Islam”. So it gives me the feeling this is not the direction.

On my way back to the hotel I have another conversation with Mohammed Cherni. We continue our talk about about religion and faith. How religion is a system and faith is very personal. We talk about Maktub, but also the openness of choice that can be written within it. About illusions. And the realm of Dunya in which we reside. How I believe you choose this life in this body at this point in time and space. A bit like going to a movie. You go do a life on earth. The place you come from is a larger eternal one. Which some call the astral self. He believes somewhat the same. That there is a self in dunya, but that the spirit lives or rather ‘is’ on a larger plain at the same time. Attention is in my opinion a way that gives you a glimpse of this spirit self. Because attention lives nowhere. You can put your attention to your finger. To a thought. To a feeling of joy. To the concept of time. All in a single second. So it does not abide to space and time as the physical appearance does. By becoming aware of this attention. You can sense a glimpse of your spirit self. Like looking in a mirror. Because you’re always there to begin with of course. Never about seeking something external. But realizing or becoming aware of what is there.

In the evening after dinner I walk past a big tourist restaurant. There is a big billboard with dervish dancers on top of it. They offer me some tea. There is music but no dancer. As I walk out in the street I pass a backroom where I see the dancer sitting. Go to him. Try to ask him if he knows a good Sufi Tekke to visit. But he doesn’t understand what I am saying. He goes up the stage to dance. Whirling. Whirling. Afterwards he is still in a trance like state. I leave him be for a bit and find someone to translate. The dancer tells me to go to a certain Lodge near Topkapi Park.

In the hotel room I read in Muhyiddin’s book. There is a part about doing the right thing. He writes about how it depends to which realm you relate. Is it confined in Dunya, where the body lives, then it follows dunya rules. But if one’s being lives in a ‘higher’ creative realm, The rules are different. “Do the right thing”, the last thing my aunt said to me. I think about my conversation today with Mohammed Cherni, the writer. And fall asleep.