The Grand Ole’ Mosque

I have come across a great deal of peculiar and remarkable sites during my travels: Cock-fighting stadiums filled with screaming fans in the Philippines, the schnee laufen team practicing with ski poles down cobblestone streets in Lucerne, Saki bombs and marriage proposals on top of Mount Fuji, and hands-down the best party I have ever crashed at the Grace Hotel during gay pride week in New York. But far and away the most breathtaking, happen upon site I have wandered upon is the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi UAE. Now you would think that I had done my homework and realized that the Sheik Zayed mosque is the number one tourist site in the United Arab Emirates, but I tend to forgo research when I am going to be living somewhere for any extended period of time because a girl’s got to have a few surprises, right? So you can imagine the delight of walking up upon this pure, white marble, piece of religious and cultural significance. It was Friday, a holy day so I thought I would just snap a few photos and keep walking because surely it was not open to the public…once again, I hadn’t done my homework, it was open!

Built recently in 2007 the grand mosque stands as the largest in the UAE and the eighth largest in the world at 22,412 square meters, boasting twenty-eight different types of marble from various countries. The marble’s stark color is even more evident as the backdrop to a sea of tourists and worshipers wearing the traditional black abaya and headscarf provided to all female visitors. Remarkably in a setting made of a notoriously echo producing material, the marble clad grand mosque remains a peaceful, silent space inside Abu Dhabi’s bustling metropolis.

I began this holy Friday staring at the small sign on my hotel ceiling that points to the direction of mecca. Waking to my alarm, the call to prayer at 5am, wondering how the religious history of a culture can be woven through an urban landscape with so much noise, pollution, and hurry. The grand mosque, and every mosque I have visited in my few short weeks here has proved that meditation, prayer, peace, are possible even in a bustling environment, especially when your religion is as old and rooted in tradition as Islam. On the way back to my sleepy desert town from Abu Dhabi, our bus driver had to make a stop. He pulled over unexpectedly, told us he would be “back in a few!” and went to a roadside mosque to pray. I’ve seen a New York minute, British tea time and an afternoon siesta, but this is my first run in with a culture that makes a habit of taking time to pray. Stumbling upon the grand mosque amidst Abu Dhabi’s high rises and sheesha haze has presented one of those “Aha!” moments, where I think I may be beginning to understand a culture. Then again, I still couldn’t tell you which way to Mecca without the pointer on my ceiling.