It is a massive understatement to say that I had an eventful summer. It dawned on me only today that one of the reasons that I didn't journal everything while it was happening was that I didn't have time to mentally process all that was happening. So I wrote a list of things to journal about once I had time to think it all through. While in Egypt, I began thinking about the things on that list, and now that I'm back in Paris, I've been attempting to catch up on the journal.
Today I wrote seven pages about spiritual warfare...and think I could still write more if I sat still long enough to allow my thoughts to go there. And now that I have a few minutes to write another Egypt post, it is interesting that it's time to write about Al-Azhar Park, when my mind is filled with thoughts about the spiritual warfare that comes with Islam.
Al-Azhar is a gorgeous green park perched up on a hill in the middle of Cairo--so that you can see the brown city all around in every direction. I can't wait to post the pictures on the photoblog for you to see the things my eyes took in that evening.
The overwhelming MASS that is Cairo, Egypt.
The contrast of lush green against desert brown.
The millions of minarets.
The many Muslims we saw...modern couples, fundamentalist couples. One man in white with his four wives in black. A wedding. Children flying kites. Nearly all of them amazed by us, the foreigners, walking through their park.
As the sun lowered and I was snapping some phenomenal photos of the sunset with minarets, the most eerie sound began to bellow. At first it was just one voice, "Alllllllllllllaaaaah akbar!" And then one minaret after another picked up the noise and began to broadcast their sound. I had thought it was an eerie sound in the UAE when I could hear the 5 mosques around my house announce the call to prayer simultaneously, but not in unison.
I'd never heard anything like the sound at Al-Azhar, though. I couldn't began to number how many mosques there are in Cairo, but it seemed we could hear every single one...none of them syncranized with any of the others.
A cacophony of demonic noise screaming out into the night to come be deceived.
I switched my camera to video to record the sound, so I could post it here. As I scanned the park, I was amazed. NO ONE WAS PRAYING. Not a single person kneeled to the ground. I was so used to seeing people pray in the street in the UAE, and had even seen it up in Alexandria, I expected to see it there in the park. I especially expected to see the fundamentalists kneeling. Nope. No one.
A covered woman approached us and asked if she could take our picture with her son. She sort of snapped me out of my surprise at the Islam that surrounded me and brought me back around to the Islam that I must always keep in front of me, lest I grow hardened: I must look at the person, at the MUSLIM, and not at Islam...the great deception of the enemy.
After we said goodbye to her, we went to make our exit out of the park...only to be stopped several more times for more photographs. We ended up talking with one family for over an hour. (Can you imagine their amazement that four Americans were in Cairo, and spoke various levels of Arabic? I love watching people's faces whenever they realize that KO--a red headed, blue eyed woman--speaks Arabic quite well.) Since my Arabic consists of just words that I can only put into two-year-old-fashioned phrases, but my understanding is much higher, I listened alot. And had my picture taken more in one hour than probably my whole life combined.
After a summer of wading through some of the fiercest spiritual warfare of my life, and an hour after listening to an audible reminder that the enemy is real and has a hold on North Africa--even if they don't kneel to it in public--I was kissing the faces of women I'd just met but already loved deeply. Lord help me, for how I do love Muslims. If it hadn't been seared into my heart already throughout the summer, my evening in Al-Azhar Park was just further evidence.
Click HERE, HERE, and HERE for more photos.
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