The old mosque

With the head full of worries I walked down to the Zharkent old mosque to find some peace and quietness. I had to go around and around of the double wall to get to find a way in. The old mosque or old temple is surrounded by its natural old and reconstructed wall and a new fence in the middle of street as it would be a protected American embassy in the middle of a metropolis. The place look dead, no one inside. Just some small kids trespassing the first fence.  

The building can say a lot about old and new history. The main door to go across the old wall is build with the architecture as could be used in an Uzbek Madrasa . On the top of the door a small Chinese tower.

I don’t know if it is allowed to go inside. But I found the guard or the keeper and I gave him about one euro to snick in.

Inside we found an old mosque build over a Chinese temple or a Chinese temple build over an old mosque. The main building was definitely a Chinese architecture. However, on the walls one could see the word Alla written in Arabic characters.  The red Chinese roofs culminated with a half moon. The Muslim “altar” finished with a Chinese throne.

Outside the beautiful wild garden a dozens of crows jumped around. Inside on the dark angles dozens of bats. Both animals symbols of death. If you ask me to make up a story I would tell you about  old warriors that fought and drooped their bodies on the temple ground. Dozens of penitents souls forced to stay for the shame of dropping blood in the name of the name of the name.

How many times an invisible line changed its longitude. How many Chinese people living on that side? How many Kazhak people living on the other side. And after hundreds of years nothing changed, the time passed just leaving a transvestite sanctuary.