Sahur

A couple weekends ago, we went to my Turkish teacher's house for a quick overnight trip. We were going to have dinner with her Fri night, and while we were making our plans late that afternoon, her family kept calling. Her aunt from out of town begged her to bring the foreigners so she could meet us, since she had never met a foreigner before. Finally, our teacher said to us "why don't we surprise my family and go to my house tonight, and you can have sahur tomorrow." Now, her family lives 2 hours away by public transportation, and none of us had a car, and my roommate had to be back by lunch time the next day. But we didn't want to pass up an opportunity to meet her family and have sahur (the before-dark breakfast they eat during Ramadan). So we through our things together and headed out the door at about 6:30 pm. On the way to the train, we stopped at a bakery and grabbed a large cheese-filled roll-type-thing for a snack. When we got to her house at 8:30, her family had leftovers waiting for us--beans, rice, bread, and salad. Then all the ladies gathered to watch a Turkish soap opera (which my roommate is now hooked on). After more chit chat (and lots of questions from her curious family), we headed to bed at the reasonable hour of 11. At 3:30 am, we woke up for sahur. All us ladies (our teacher, her mother, aunt, grandmother, older sister, my roommate and I) crowded around a kitchen table for breakfast. It was mostly quiet, since none of us were fully awake, except perhaps the mother who had prepared everything. Here's a picture we took of the leftovers at our second breakfast that day:


As with every meal, we drank tea with breakfast. I think I only had 1 glass, maybe 2 (they're small glasses). At 4:30, as with everyone else, I tried to go back to bed. It was futile. I didn't sleep again until we got on the train at 9 am. I enjoyed the morning immensely though. As the like slowly increased, I could hear the sounds of roosters crowing, then dogs barking, and later birds joined in chirping. When I went to the window, I could smell sheep. To the right were mountains, to the left was the Mediterranean. Finally, I saw the sheep. Not too long after, I heard their shepherd. Now, coming from suburban America, my images of sheep always came from these peaceful paintings in books. The shepherd I saw that morning was anything from peaceful. He was a cranky old man who spent most of his time yelling at his sheep and throwing rocks at them to get them to move! I almost laughed aloud, but I didn't want him to hear me. I didn't understand any words he was saying, but from the context it sounded like "Hey you stupid sheep, get away from that! No, no, stop that, go over there! Why do you keep walking over to that &%$! patch of dirt!" In the light of dawn, I couldn't get a good picture of the shepherd, but here's his sheep:


I couldn't help but think of the Good Shepherd that morning. As a pet owner, I always imagined that shepherds have this sweet natural loving bond with their sheep. In reality, shepherds are humans who get really fed up with having to lead such stupid animals to make a living. There is nothing naturally lovable about sheep (they're not cute and fluffy usually, either). The Good Shepherd doesn't care for us because we're lovable. But we can give thanks that He's a lot nicer to us than we deserve, and a lot nicer than human shepherds usually are.