land. You gotta know a couple of words like how to say Thanks, Please, Hello. Once Turks realize that verbal communication ain’t gonna happen, they laugh and offer me some tea (Chai). When I walk away I am Ahbi, or brother. I was in Konya yesterday for the Mevlana festival, walking down an alley alone and came across a little boy, maybe 8 or 9 years old, begging for money as the snow fell around us. I told him in Turkish that I don’t speak Turkish and didn’t understand him and he asked for one Lira. I gave him 1.50, all the change I had. With very happy and very lost eyes, he smiled and took my hand and placed it to his grubby cheek. I walked away haunted by this child. I saw him a short while later and he looked at me, smiled and slightly bowed his head 
with eyes closed. Nobody who was with me that day saw him and I didn’t take a picture of him. Either I put a little light into the darkness of just a lonely, invisible soul in the world who begged for his family or human traffickers, who I connected with for a moment in time or he was an angel who for that brief moment reminded me of how good I have it and how especially in the Christmas season, that charity is the best gift of all. First Corinthians 13:13. Not a quote; just a reference.Incidentally Dervishes take a vow of poverty and begging for them is a means of keeping oneself humble, but begging for oneself is not allowed...only begging for charity. Like Orthodox Jews, giving to the poor and needy is just what you do without question.
These pics are me n the snow in Konya, me with Izet and Aihan (local boys) in Karataş (beach
town), the inside of the Church of St. Peter in Antioch, or Antakya (which Peter started and Paul also preached), and a 2000 year old local Mosaic at the Mosaic Museum of Antioch. You can guess what the video is, but watch it on small screen; it looks better than if you enlarge it. 
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