A menace is more visible than a threat.
Wednesday October 23rd: Or so it had seemed arriving in Istanbul on. But only seemed, because the truth was the menace at that moment was all my imagination, not fact.
The truth was that when we walked in the city for the first time and there was the midday call to prayer, as it happened signifying the end of Ramadan that Wednesday, we removed our shoes and entered the white stoned mosque – one of the many that on the ancient quadrilateral design template of Aghia Sophia in the City, it might have the Laleli Mosque This mosque, allegedly designed by architect Mehmet Aga, is located in Eminönü neighborhood. Built in 1763 during the reign of Mustafa III, the complex consists of the mosque, a soup kitchen, fountain, drinking water distribution center, shrine, inn, university, timekeeper’s clock room, housing for the clergymen, and several shops – and a graceful hand ushered us in to join with the rest of the congregation.
– "You too belong here", the hand had said. "Salaam aleikan, and peace be with you."
And yet the call to prayer had already aroused in my chest something else, a formless memory, shadows on the nursery wall, whispering voices from a past. This imaginary menace, it belonged to no true life experience that I could recall. Who had put it there? How had I made this early connection between childhood nonsense, the cow that had jumped over the moon, and this present cresent shape upon the minarets. It belonged to an ancestral history.
In Belgrade two days before reaching Istanbul we had walked south along the Terazije Kralija Milana to the Sanctuary of Sava, 
the new Cathedral, a bastion to match the bulwarks of the Kalmegadan fortress, 
a mighty church to resist the menace from the south. Under construction for almost a century to make menace more visible, and equally ancestral…
…the power to give form and to make it more real; the menace of the Cross and of the Crescent.
So that I began to lose my childhood imagination, the fear of terror, and I began instead to perceive – "And peace be with you" – this meeting place of faiths.
mmj