Turkey

Tatvan, Turkey: report by Pupak Haghighi

I arrived in Tatvan on the morning of the 13th of May at 6 am on a bus from Ankara. On Friday, I went to the cultural centre of the city, as was suggested by the wife of Tatvan’s mayor, who is supporting an earth healing event that I and a group of dedicated friends are organizing there.

This was my fourth visit to Tatvan. On my previous visit, I surprisingly discovered that I can communicate with the local people, who speak the Kurdish language. I grew up in Northern Iran, so I speak fluent Farsi. We share more than half of our vocabulary, and in general we can understand each other with a bit of patience and practice. So, at the cultural centre, I started to speak Farsi and asked the people to speak in Kurdish to me, and soon there was an enthusiastic crowd around me. There was an overwhelming sense of connection as we discovered the common, if somewhat out-of-tune, language that we share. Within an hour people had brought their guitars and were singing local songs, and we were sharing great interest in each other. At this time, an English teacher I had been looking for arrived. With him present, our communication became even clearer.

I met this English teacher the next day, and we went for a walk around Tatvan. I wanted to choose the right location for this event. I explained about the Symphony of Peace Prayers, and showed him on the website that Tatvan is marked as a host for this global wave of prayers. I asked him to help me organize, and to invite his friends the next day, which thankfully he did.

We planned for our event to take place between 3-5 pm at a public spot outdoors. Sometime after 3:00, a number of young local musicians turned up with their guitars. A friend of the English teacher also turned up, and two other local people whom I was introduced to by my team members joined us, too. The young musicians sang local and Turkish songs, attracting the attention of other people, as we were sitting in an open-air tea house. Some people even began to film the young band. I passed out a few stickers I had with the message ‘May Peace Prevail on Earth’ in several languages. One of the players put the stickers on his guitar and others put them on their clothing.

Eventually the guests and the band left, and just four of us remained. We decided to go and a share a meal. At the restaurant, a conversation followed. I mentioned that we need to look past appearances and reach for the light in each other, as no one is perfect and every one carries a spark of the divine. Amazingly, we could all agree on this! I was very touched when my newly found friends told me that they agree about reaching for the light in the other person, even when we find the other person unpleasant.

At the end of the day, I was not quite sure if our event had delivered our objectives. I had the feeling that I’d like to have other occasions to make the Soul of WoMen campaign accessible to friends in this area.

The next day, on the 16th of May, I had the opportunity to listen to the Soul of WoMen webinar hosted by James Twyman, with Gary Zukav, Maki Saionji, and Jude Currivan (on the Fuji Declaration website). As I listened to this fascinating conversation, I was quite startled to recognise that similar topics had come up in our conversation the previous day. I resonated with a sentence that Mr. Zukav said about our universe being a meaningful, intelligent creation. Suddenly, I had the sense that the vibration of Soul of WoMen was very much present during our conversation, or perhaps we were in the energy field of this event. How else could we have the conversations we did? This was the moment I was truly touched by the spirit and significance of the Soul of WoMen campaign.

The small event we held in Tatvan was a seed. We connected with the global body of the Symphony of Peace Prayers and the Soul of WoMen campaign. I hope the small seed we planted in this beautiful place will germinate and grow to become a beautiful garden.

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