So You Think You Can Dance (Like a Turk)?

Answer: you can't.
But I only found this out tonight, and it's been a long, busy day (do you see a pattern?). Let's start at the beginning.
We went over to Asia (ha! sorry, still not old) this morning to meet with the nicest Turkish lady of all time; I feel horrible for not remembering her name, but I'm not sure if we ever actually learned it, so that's that. Anyways, she runs an NGO (non-governmental organization) that specializes in women's issues and Islamic studies, both doing charity work and hosting scholarly conferences. We had an extremely interesting conversation with her about Sufism (the mystical branch of Islam, adherents of which are prohibited from practicing in Turkey), women's rights, and the role of Islam in Turkey. She was one of the warmest people I've ever met; as she put it, "I am dominated by love", and it showed. As our conversation wound to a close, she said "Children, I want to feed you." And out her coworkers came with cups of Ayran and plates piled high with lahmacun. Also, she arranged for us to meet, when we go to Konya, with a friend of hers who is a descendant of the Mevlana, or Rumi.
We came back to Europe for a presentation by Kristina and Emily on the Orient Express. We were also invited by Sarah and William to join them for a concert at 6. Before that, I wanted to go exploring, so I walked over to Rüstem Pasha Camii. It's the smallest but most intricately tiled mosque I've been to so far. I don't blame you if all these pictures are starting to look the same, but I feel obliged to put them up just the same:

The front of the mosque
Ceiling.
One thing about this mosque- it's very small, and the only other people in it with me were French tourists. Tourists are everywhere in this city, but for some reason these ones particularly annoyed me, with many of the women's heads uncovered and many of the men wearing shorts. It's not that I've turned into an Islamist, but I just don't understand why people come to this city if they don't plan on respecting local mores, norms, and traditions. I'm very curious about why people come in the first place (especially these huge tour buses filled with Japanese couples; do they have any idea what they're looking at when they go to the sites? What possessed them to vacation in Istanbul?), but that's another issue.
At 6, we headed over to the instrument store/museum where the performance was supposed to be held. But this was no ordinary performance. As Sarah and William had discovered last Tuesday, after an hour or so of traditional Turkish music, the venue changed from concert to prayer hall. Sufi orders, whose most familiar representatives are the famed 'whirling dervishes' whose dancing gives them a closer connection to the divine, are outlawed in Turkey. Though the law is not enforced, apparently Sufis are not liberal enough for the secularists or orthodox enough for the Islamists, and therefore do not publicize events like the one we attended tonight. I began to think we weren't going to see Sufi prayer, but about an hour into the Turkish music (which was really interesting itself, played with a host of bizarre instruments), a man dressed in traditional Sufi dress entered and began, well, whirling. For a good 20 minutes. It was really beautiful actually. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but I thought it would've been inappropriate- apparently it's not. After the ceremony was over, a woman brought out a birthday cake to the man who clearly was the group's leader. Then they told us, in English, to sit down.
We should've figured what would happen next. First they brought out bowls of soup. We told ourselves we were going to leave after the soup, but there was no time; as soon as we had finished, they were filling our bowls with another kind of soup and bringing out plates of bread, chicken, and pilav.
After dinner, the music was started up again, but was much more celebratory, with people clapping and dancing. About 20 minutes in, one of our Turkish acquaintances indicated that I should join them in dancing. Me, dancing with a dozen Turks, including the whirling guy, who was quite a dancer. Pretty soon, we were all up, making fools out of ourselves trying to dance like the Turks to this traditional music. I can't really explain why, but there's just something fundamentally different about the way Turks dance and the way we dance. We noticed it in the clubs 2 weekends ago too; maybe we dance more with our hips, and theirs is more in the shoulders. Whatever it is, something was just off, though we gave it our best. I'm pretty sure the Turks had as good a time as we did, and I daresay we made the old guy's birthday party. Here's the dancing part, with me and the group leader:
(props to David on the candid pic, and no, I am not drunk here)
It's just breathtaking how how much Turkish hospitality we have received in the past 4 days. And none of it expected either. What a country- that's why Turkey. We're going to an Ottoman palace tomorrow, so I doubt we'll get the same treatment, but at this point I wouldn't be completely surprised if we do.