Walking the Bible [antikvár]

Go Forth he call to prayer sounded just after 3 p.m. It came from a minaret, echoed off the storefronts, and stopped me, briefly, in the middle of the street. All around, people halted their hurrying and turned their attention, momentarily, to God. A few old men pulled cloaks around their shoulders and slipped into the back of a shop. Two boys rushed across the road and disappeared behind a stone wall. A woman picked up her basket of radishes and tiptoed out of sight. Part of me felt odd to be starting a journey into the roots of the Bible in a place so spiritually removed from my own. But continuing toward the center of town, I realized my unease might be a reminder of a truth tucked away in the early verses of Genesis: Abraham was not originally the man he became. He was not an Israelite, he was not a Jew. He was not even a believer in God—at least initially. He was a traveler, called by some voice not entirely clear that said: Go, head to this land, walk along this route, and trust what you will fmd. Within minutes, the afternoon prayers were complete and people returned to the streets. Dogubayazit, in extreme eastern Turkey, was thuddingly bleak, with two asphalt roads intersecting in a neglected town of thirty thousand. Just outside of town, hundreds of empty oil tankers were parked in a double-file line waiting to cross the border into Iran. The trucks, the town, as well as most of the surrounding countryside, were completely overshadowed by a looming triangular peak with a pristine cap of snow.