Prayer and Rugs

Monday Oct. 6

It's school vacation week because of the Eid celebration so we had a "pajama and TV morning!"  At 10 AM the temp was 95 and felt like 103 already.  Eid-al-Adha  commemorates the feast of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son so their are lots of lambs sold at the meat market to use for family celebrations. Also, because of Eid, the Grand Mosque will be open today for tours to non-Muslims;  that will be our goal for today!  But first, Peter wanted to try ordering McDonald's to be delivered!!  EVERYTHING can be delivered here!

The kids really did not want to go to the Mosque so Suzanne got a sitter for the afternoon and off we went!!  Suz and I were both wearing pants and tops whose sleeves covered our elbows but we still had to put on abaya and hijab before entering. In a tent outside the mosque, Muslim ladies helped to find us an abaya and then secured a hijab for each of us. We then proceeded into the courtyard of the mosque with our guide.

She asked us to remove our shoes before going into the mosque itself. There were cubbies for the shoes!  She then guided us into the main hall which was completely carpeted, domed, beautifully lit with a huge chandelier made in Belgium and accessory lighting made in France. Inside the dome are small stained glass windows, each having the word "Ala" in Arabic. There are no statues, there is no altar, there are chairs only around the edges of the enormous main prayer room for the elderly and/or infirm. The balcony can also accommodate those who are praying.

Our guide then had the men in our group stand in a line on the rug, shoulder to shoulder; the women did the same on the line behind the men.  She indicated that shoulder to shoulder indicated equality and women behind provides personal modesty for the when praying on the rug. So the women are not necessarily in a separate room, they are simply behind the men to preserve their personal dignity.

Our guide has lived in Bahrain for 5 years and said she will be here indefinitely. She has also lived in Orlando FL. At the end of her tour we heard the "Call to Prayer" which is sung by a member 5 times each day in every mosque, small or grand and heard around the immediate vicinity of the mosque.

Our final tour was around the courtyard where there were easels set up with framed explanations and historical stories of Islam and Mohammad. Very interesting!! One, very convincingly, compared the tenets of Islam to the rights given in the US Declaration of Independence.

After reclaiming our shoes and returning our abaya and hijab, we visited a couple of Suzanne's favorite merchants. The first was a woodworker with whom she made arrangements to have a piece of furniture refinished and to have a table made, the top of which will look like one of the beautiful front doors on Bahraini homes. Next we went to her favorite rug dealer, Mohammad, who showed us some of his hand sewn orientals from Kashmir, Iran, Pakistan and others. He has done several "Rug Flops" at Suzanne's where he shows his rugs and friends of hers buy, hopefully!  She's having another one the end of October. These were really out of our price range but he did have some small, round, silk rugs, made in India, for table decoration. We decided to think about it. As we were leaving, he presented to us, as a gift, one of the small round ones. We were completely stunned and overwhelmed!!  Suzanne must be a very valued customer!!  

Back home again, we prepared dinner, ate with the kids and Pete and then watched last night's Patriots' game.......GO PATS!!!