Pasear por Palermo: la mezquita y más

Hi guys!

So, I haven’t been in the mood to blog at all recently, but I had a great day today [that is, this last Thursday] and coincidentally I’m all in a fever to write it out, for whatever reason. So, yella (Arabic: “let’s go”)!

Recently I haven’t had much to do—well, not super-recently, for the last few weeks, I guess; but with the recent torrential rain keeping me from taking long walks and cooping me up inside, I’ve felt it more acutely recently—and last night, on a whim, I decided to look up the Centro Cultural Islámico Rey Fahd (King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center)’s website.

I’ve been wanting to go since way back when I was applying for the Fulbright... which would have been around June 2014. (God, that’s crazy to think about.) Anyway, when I was working on my Fulbright application I was researching Muslims in Argentina, and trying to find information on what the community/cultural life was like, I immediately came across the King Fahd Center. For obvious reasons. It’s the sole mosque (or Islamic cultural center) in Buenos Aires, and, keeping in mind that Argentina has the largest Muslim population in the Western Hemisphere outside of the U.S. and Canada, it’s also the largest mosque in Latin America. I love visiting mosques of all stripes, and was guessing, even before I found out my city placement, that I would have many opportunities to visit Buenos Aires, so I was excited to make a “pilgrimage,” so to speak, eventually.

“Eventually” came a lot quicker than I anticipated when last night browsing the Center’s website I discovered tours were given Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at noon. Saturday was out (I’m always busy on weekends); Tuesday next week I hope to be traveling (there are no classes at the university due to final exams)…so Thursday it was, even though I only figured this out pretty late at night and I usually don’t like to do things with such little planning. But, come on—after going to BA last weekend, I’d learned it’s so easy and really not a big deal in the least. No planning required, besides some Google Maps consultations. And besides, I had no obligations in La Plata and was really itching for a change of scenery. The only little snag was I wound up staying up till 3 am, and I calculated that I needed to get up at 7:30 in order to safely get to the mosque before noon.

Naturally, I didn’t feel awesome when my alarm went off, and I considered just going back to sleep, but I’m proud I overcame that urge and made myself get up and shower. The thing I was most concerned with, timing-wise, was being able to get on the bus to BA. Bus stops in Argentina are often totally unmarked (the majority of them, in fact), but you’ll always know where they are by the line of people waiting there. The lines used to shock me and really stress me out—like, I’m literally waiting on the next city block, I’m so far back in this line, and I really need to catch this bus. I love using that past tense—“I used to”—but let’s be real, the lines still shock and horrify me. (And yet let’s keep some perspective, please—nothing can ever touch the bank lines, above all the Great Line of April 18^th outside the Banco Nacional de Argentina that had to have had over four hundred people in it, and growing every minute.) But I’ve tried to keep my cortisol levels in check as I’ve learned just how many people waiting single-file can get swallowed up in standing-room-maximized buses. Just because there are 60 people ahead of me doesn't necessarily mean I won't be getting on that bus. 

My big fear today with the BA bus was that I would be going around commuter time—9 am—and the last time I’d taken the BA bus, it had only come once every hour. If you’re too far back in the line, the bus will get full and you’ll have to wait for the next one. I could afford to miss one bus and still make it to BA with enough time to get to Rey Fahd.

So I got to the bus station and yes, sure enough, the line for number 129 was long and snake-like, twining around into the parking lot. But I was optimistic. I only had to wait maybe 20 minutes before the bus came. Bad news, though: the bus driver didn’t load the bus the way intracity buses are filled up. Once all the seats were filled, that was it. (Not sure what the protocol is on this, because sure, it’s an hour-long ride, but usually there’s 1-3 people who just stand in the aisle the whole time, no more seats for them.) So I just missed the cut-off. That’s okay, I was guaranteed to get on the next one, and timing-wise I had enough time for the delay. But to my pleasant surprise, the next bus came only 20 minutes later, much earlier than I’d expected.

(I have looked everywhere for bus schedules, online and in person, and have yet to find a single one. I’ve got to ask around about where these can be found. As of now, I operate purely on guesswork. This also applies to the bus I take to the university on a regular basis. The bus comes every 15 minutes. Every time it comes, I check the time on my watch to try to figure out what kind of schedule it’s operating on. Every. Last. Time. it’s a different time. There’s zero rhyme or reason that I can decipher, so I just show up when I can and hope I get lucky.)

The bus ride to BA takes exactly an hour. As far as actual time barreling down the road, it’s probably 35 minutes or so. The rest of the time is waiting in traffic or at stoplights, finely threading through clogged BA streets, etc. So the distance is not far. The ride is nice and restful, along pastures and wide irrigation ditches.

I wound up getting off one stop too early in BA (there are at least three different stops along the same street—the largest street in the world, incidentally), but it was only a difference of a couple of blocks.

To my extremely pleasant surprise, the hand-me-down BA map Dad gave me—which it should be noted I appreciated upon the first time I used it; it’s excellent—turned out to have a metro map on it, too. I took the metro from Avenida 9 de Julio to Palermo. It was my first time using the BA Subte. Not much of an accomplishment, considering metros are always extremely simple, but hey, that’s one more “now I’ve done it”s to cross off my list.

And so I arrived in Palermo. Palermo is one of the nicer barrios (I read somewhere that it’s “middle-class,” but my friends who live in BA all consider it rich…), known for having a boho vibe. I went up one street from the metro station, and there was the mosque complex! Yes, it’s really enormous. Certainly the biggest mosque I’ve seen outside of Turkey and Egypt. It takes up probably three city blocks. The perimeter is encircled by a tasteful, and also efficient, black barred fence. It has two huge minarets—and good for them on that! lots of mosques in non-“Muslim countries” are forced to have really short minarets to appease the neighbors—at least two domes, one smaller and one larger; many different buildings, and it’s not clear how they all interconnect; and sprawling, very healthy green lawns. Very idyllic.

It was 11:15 and I had a little time to kill. Having satisfied myself that I had very immediately found the mosque, I went looking for food. Unfortunately I was just in the wrong area, I guess. I went down several roads and they were purely ultra-ritzy (laughably so) apartment buildings, no food in sight. I was starving at this point, and knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the tour with how hungry I was, so I finally had to give in and go to the sole food option I’d passed, a little kiosk. Kiosks only sell junk food, so my breakfast was an individually-wrapped giant alfajor (a sweet kind of pastry confection with dulce de leche in the middle). Delicious, yes; healthy choice, no; but oh well.

When it was finally ten minutes to the hour I went back to the mosque complex’s gate. To my surprise, there were about a dozen other people waiting (in a tidy line, of course). I had expected to be the only person up for the mosque tour at noon on a Thursday. The guard who checked us in was all business: ID out and in your hands before you present yourself! I realized I only had a copy of my passport with me and despaired a little, that I might be turned away. I got out my U.S. drivers license, too, and good thing I had that with me—the guard rejected my paper passport photocopy but was quite content with the license.  We had to lock up our bags in lockers; only cellphones (whatever would fit in the palm of one hand) were allowed. The safety precautions make sense, sadly…

We would up being a group of about 20, and I was really surprised, that we were so many; more so when our guide, a middle-aged man in a button-up shirt and suit jacket, met us in the reception courtyard and said, “Oh good, you guys are a really small group, we’ll have a nice, intimate chat with this one.” (Paraphrasing of course; this is obviously in Spanish.)

The courtyard was lovely: a fountain set into the shiniest, most freshly-polished granite tile floor you can imagine. (And I was imagining: rolling on it, roller blading over it, sliding around in socks on it…) It was very quiet; it had the feel that we’d entered some utopian city, walled off from the world.

Our guide led us first to the colegio. My first new information: I had had no idea there was a school in the complex. It’s elementary school only. Aside from the regular school curriculum, the students learn about Islam and Arabic—so lucky! We wound up seeing several of the children, first playing in the distance, and then when they came inside, the boys running up to shake hands with our guide, with big smiles and “salaam aleikum”s all around. The children were adorable, I can’t even tell you. Such good, clean-cut kids.

Then our guide led us to a classroom, where adult Arabic lessons are held. (Bummer for me that I can’t access those!) Our guide had initially started the tour by acknowledging that people came to these mosque tours for usually one of two reasons: either just to tour the facility (hey, that’s me!), or to have a chance to learn more about Islam. The time in the classroom was to give people a chance to air some of their questions while allowing us to be seated comfortably. And it was very clear that most, most, most of the people on the tour were there for the latter reason.

The questions began. The guide made it repeatedly clear that he was happy to answer anything, that these tours were a kind of outreach on the part of the Islamic community to debunk myths about Islam and spread the knowledge. I understand why the Islamic community has that sentiment, and bless them for it. You really had to admire our guide’s patience and good-naturedness. But God—what obnoxious people on the tour with me! Just obnoxious. The questions ranged from the outrageously general—“so what does Islam believe? Tell me everything”—to the offensively pointed: “but women are considered slaves, right? How can you say it is a religion of peace if thieves get their hands chopped off!” (And for the love of Allah, people, turn off your cell phones! I was ready to grab them and throw them against the wall—loud pings going off throughout the tour every few seconds, and half the people just texting the entire time…)

This question and answering went on for over an hour. I didn’t learn anything about Islam I hadn’t known before, but I did find one thing in particular that our guide spoke about curious. He said that Allah forgives all sins but one, and that is the crime of “association” (not sure what the proper English translation would be?), that of associating anything with Allah except Allah (i.e., worshipping any god but Allah, or in addition to Allah. Allah’s Oneness, tawhid, is the most important thing).

As it happens, I did a research project on this topic in my Islamology class in Granada, on sin and forgiveness in Islamic jurisprudence. Islamic jurisprudence (“fiqh”) is fascinating stuff! All scholars are agreed that Allah forgives basically any sin. There’s an oft-quoted line in the Qur’an that says “[Allah] forgives whoever He wills and punishes whoever He wills.” It’s made clear that Allah can forgive anyone for anything at any time… Except there’s also that line that goes “Surely Allah forgives not setting up partners with Him, and He forgives all besides this to whom He pleases.” This is the sin of association, called shirk. And this is where fiqh gets interesting. While everyone agrees shirk is certainly the worst sin there is, Islamic scholars can and do interpret things any infinite number of different ways, so there wind up being three different opinions about Allah’s attitude towards it:

      1)  Shirk is the one sin Allah will not forgive. That’s it, game over.

      2) Shirk is terrible, but if you fix your ways and repent before you die, Allah may forgive you. (I mean, He probably will, but it’s always up to Him, so who can say for sure.)

      3) Allah can choose to forgive anything at any time. This includes shirk.

I was curious about our guide’s matter-of-fact statement on shirk for a few reasons. When I had done my fiqh research on the topic, I had found the different viewpoints, but not the number of scholars on each side of the issue. And quantity matters! What are fringe views, and what is basically universally-agreed-upon? Was our guide’s view of shirk the mainstream view (consulting Wikipedia, I think so), or just that of whatever school this mosque follows? (“Your mosque has strong ties to Saudi Arabia. Do you follow the Wahhabi school?” would have been a more interesting question than most that were asked…) I also found it interesting because our guide kept stressing Allah’s attitude towards this as exemplary of His radiant compassion…but did anyone else in that extremely-Catholic room catch the implications of this aspect of doctrine…? I’m not pointing fingers here (lots of strains of Christianity believe the same thing, in reverse), just curious as to what my tour-going compatriots caught on to or didn’t.

After our guide finally put an end to the questioning, once he realized how late it was, we continued our tour by going to the prayer hall. The main event! We left our shoes in a large granite antechamber. There were boys from the elementary school scampering about everywhere, having the greatest time sliding around in their socks on the silky smooth floor. I’ll say it again—so adorable!

The prayer hall was lovely and vast, with spaces for 2000 people. The floor rug had come from Saudia Arabia, and was richly red and gold with designs to designate spacing of worshippers. In the middle of the room, under the huge dome with a sparkling crystal chandelier hanging off it (great acoustics in there), was a kind of podium set into the floor where the imam was sitting. The Eastern wall, which the room faced, was mostly window, and the room was lit purely by natural light, a common theme throughout the mosque complex that I appreciated.

It turns out we were there just in time for the midday prayer. Our guide bid us sit down on the floor near the back of the room, and a minute later the adhan started. We were behind some benches, so I couldn’t see the imam once we sat down; but I’m pretty sure it was he who gave the recitation into a microphone.

Men in business suits started trickling in, and the boys came in from the antechamber, wriggling with excitement. Only about a dozen people, men and boys together, ended up coming. (Above us, on a higher tier hidden by decoratively-carved screen, was the women’s prayer section.) The adhan was exquisite, but also the quickest I’ve ever heard; instead of repeating the lines several times, as you always hear when the call is coming from a muezzin in a minaret, the imam only said each line once, and was done in probably thirty seconds. Then he led the men in prayer, through the movements of standing, to hands on knees, to standing, to prostrating on the floor, to standing once more, using vocal cues.

I’ve never gotten to see the prayer in person before. I was torn between feeling very lucky, and also uncomfortable, having essentially been told by the guide to stare.

After many cycles of the prayer movements, the imam signaled it was the last one, and then everyone sat down for the sermon. A man in a suit came forward to sit next to the imam and was given his own microphone. I’m not sure if the imam didn’t speak Spanish, or if he just preferred it that way, but he spoke only in Arabic (strong Gulf dialect—the most beautiful, in my book), and the man next to him translated seamlessly into Spanish.

The sermon was interesting. It was not a sermon of the kind I’m used to in Christian churches. Rather than a rousing, motivational speech, this was bullet points—just quick, practical pointers. How you should thank Allah before a meal. How you should always ask permission before entering someone’s home or office. How you should identify yourself by name when you arrive at someone’s house, rather than just saying “it’s me.” These were run-over in a quick, matter-of-fact way, with no transitions between them, and then very suddenly it was over; the worshippers were bid to greet each other (exactly as happens at a Christian mass, everyone shaking each other’s hands and wishing them peace), and then the group disbanded.

Afterwards, our guide led us to the library, which had a nice selection of books in Arabic, Spanish, and English, and was decorated by two full-wall-sized photos of Mecca, for another sit-down “ask me anything” chat about Islam. What followed was more questions that were either offensive in their insinuations or just offensive because really, couldn’t you have been bothered to do the most basic research on Islam before coming here, rather than coming and expecting an hour with a guide to teach you everything about the religion? But oh well. They deserve a lot of credit for coming and having the pretense of wanting to learn, at least.

On our way out of the complex, two and a half hours later, we were given full-color, 100+ page books called “A Brief Illustrated Guide to Islam” (but in Spanish). I’m so excited to read mine over and get to learn about Islam and practice my Spanish! Two for one!

I was hungry for lunch after the mosque visit, but after walking around for a half hour or so I could only find one place with empanadas. There was no menu on the wall or prices; I ordered two empanadas and after they had been heated up I asked how much I owed. The woman gave me a look and told me 36 pesos. I could tell just from her face that she had decided to overcharge me for being a foreigner. Also, I know the price of an empanada. Haggling isn’t a thing here, and I wasn’t going to call her out on it, so I had to satisfy myself with just being really annoyed. So it goes…

I spent the rest of the day walking through the huge gardens that dominate Palermo. The sprawling parks, punctuated by various ornamental buildings and lakes, reminded me of Madrid’s Parque del Retiro. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect, a cloudless blue sky and bright sun, 75 degrees, a soft breeze. Vicious mosquitoes in the shade, though! Whenever I’d start to get hot and be tempted to seek tree cover, I would quickly get flushed out into the sun again by their swarming. Geese abounded, too—the most well-fed, plump and snowy geese you’ve ever met. Culturally the parks had a great vibe: friends picnicking on the lawns, lovers sharing ice cream on park benches, and heavy traffic along the paved paths between roller bladers, bikers, and joggers.

Originally my plan had been go to the mosque and then go to an art museum after, but once I got out of the mosque, given how many hours it had been and also how lovely and huge the park and gardens were, I decided to just walk Palermo and enjoy the day instead. I had seen a Japanese garden marked on the map as part of the park complex, but when I got there I found out there was a steep admissions fee, plus the whole thing was very shady (=mosquitoes) and looked tiny. I also avoided the zoo, but did pass through some botanical gardens.

It was 4 o’clock by then, and I started calculating when I should take the bus back to La Plata. I figured getting on the bus by six would be a good plan. And then…I remembered most jobs in Argentina end at 6 pm. Whew! Close call on that one.

I decided to start heading back right there and then. I took the subway back to the “microcentro” to the obelisk that marks the center of the Avenida 9 de Julio, and found the stop for the La Plata bus. Amazingly, I only waited about five minutes before the bus arrived. Almost nobody was on it. I successfully beat the rush hour! I had the best kind of day. It was honestly just perfect. Round-trip bus fare to BA? $5. What a great little mini-vacation! There’s no reason I shouldn’t take one more often.

Love,