The plane landed in Istanbul airport, the passengers got off and two old men happened to be side by side and were going to the gate in front of me. From the wrinkles on their faces and the complete whiteness of their hair, it could be guessed that both of them were probably in their eighth or ninth decade of life, but their appearance and the way they dressed indicated two different religious and cultural origins.
One with a white beard and the other pink, one with traditional clothes of religious people and the other with a tie and jeans.
At the entrance of the gate, a man in a tie said in the tone of the old Tehrani people, “I’ll go to you, and I’ll go to you.”
After the gate, the old man slapped a tie on another’s back and said that this rainy weather badly calls for whiskey, I came here from Tehran for the love of drinking whiskey in this weather. Don’t you think this bad weather calls for whiskey?
_ I swear, I came to Istanbul for the love of Hagia Sophia Mosque, I go there directly from the airport, it feels strange to pray in that mosque.
Oh, father, so you are not from him
_ I am, but I am a prayer person
_You come and pick a courier with us, you don’t care about prayer
_ You, let’s go with me, Ayasofia, you will get more drunk
– Dad, you have prayed for a lifetime, Haji, come this time and see how our story is
_ Our love and mood are different
The conversations continued with jokes and humor, and I thought to myself that the continuation of this story would lead to violence and a bit of violence, when I saw two old men putting their hands on each other’s backs, and one of them said, Haji, I hope you will pray a cool prayer and count. Now, say a prayer for us and the other one said have a good time and wished each other a good trip and parted ways.
I thought that the Turkish society was able to establish a relative reconciliation between the religious and the non-religious, people with opposing ideologies were able to achieve tolerance.
The call to prayer and music are heard together and Jesus is to his own religion and Moses is to his religion.
I remembered the words of my grandfather, who said that in those years, people all lived together in peace, from the shopkeeper to the family and friends, there were all kinds of people, and no one cared what the other person had, but one at a time Somewhere everyone got a label and a nickname and no one was tolerable for another
One became anti-revolution, one became Hezb Elahi, a series of tyrants became tyrants, and others became westernized.
My friend became a godless communist and we never saw each other again, he became the trusted doctor of the people, an impure price and everyone rejected him, one of my friends was executed as a hypocrite, one of the old tradesmen became a bazaar and ran away, and in short, there was a distance between all of us and distance fell
At that time, we thought that the truth was exactly what we believed in, and that anyone who opposes us is an obstacle to the growth and prosperity of society and even humanity. When we see and remember those extreme reactions, we both laugh and feel ashamed of ourselves for how much we believed in our views. Each of us, after a few decades when our heads hit a rock, now we think that we have gone too far, they also said some things right.
He laughed and said that maybe we were all right. At that time, we thought that all the truth is with us and our conscience, now we understand that all the truth is distributed to everyone and everyone has a share of it.
I think this is the biggest insight that we Iranians still need to learn before the fire of violence under the ashes ignites.
Respect each other’s opinions
This post is written by Padidehsaft