The slight drizzle hitting the dry ground and dead grass was the highlight of my day. It’s been over three months since the last glimpse of rainfall, the drizzle dropped and filled the cracks and crevices of the tarnished ground. I could see the amazement and feel the excitement of the grass, as it was enveloped in water. But all good things have to come to an end, and the slight drizzle stopped as quickly as it started.

(Camera Clicks) “We’re recording in, 3…2…1… Hello, my name is Joseph and I am a 15-year-old in the year 2060. To many, this year has no significance, but to me, I see it as the 40-year anniversary of the last normal year on Earth. I woke up this morning and looked outside through my glass window to see the barren wasteland that I live in, the sun’s destructive rays continue to deplete the ground of any moisture left. But like a miracle, a cloud covered the sun and it began to rain. The sight was astonishing. I ran out of my motion detecting doors as they quickly swung open to grab my camera and record. But when I came back it was all over. I put the camera down, and here I am talking to you about the rather unpleasant world that I live in.”

“Joseph! I’ve made your breakfast. Come on, or you’ll be late for school.”

“Ugh, Grandpa! I was in the middle of something very important.”

Joseph forgets to turn off the camera and takes it with him to the kitchen, where he sees his food resting on the automatic stove top. The camera catches a glimpse of his Grandpa with his robotic replacement arm. Joseph places the camera on a book, facing towards him, and takes a seat at the table.

“Thanks for the food, but I am not that hungry.”

“What’s wrong, Joe, are you okay? I made your favorite, bacon and eggs. I know it is severely outdated but I tried my best.”

“Gramps… did you know it rained this morning?” Joseph looks up from his plate, and his eyes meet with his Grandpa’s. The old man’s eyes widen.

“Really? That’s the first time this year.” He walks towards the one way, sun protective glass window and looks outside at the slightly damp ground. “You know… back in my day, during this time of year it always rained, and not just a slight drizzle. Some days there were the normal routine rainfalls, and other times there were worries of too much rain and homes would flood…”

Joseph cannot help but interrupt his grandfather out of astonishment. “Floods? Grandpa, that sounds way better than what we are living through right now. What caused everything to change?”  he blurts out.

“… however,” Grandpa continues, “as I grew older and older, nature as I once knew it began to change into what it is today.” Joseph gets up abruptly, and quickly turnes the camera so that it directly faces his Grandpa, and continues recording the conversation. He walks towards his Grandpa.

“Can you tell me more about how life was when you were a kid?”

“Well, as you know, we live in New Jersey. Back then, it was known as the Garden State, which is ironic since there aren’t any plants or grass in a 10-mile radius of the state as of now. But I remember going to parks and playing football in the grass with my friends. Smelling the fresh air in the spring mornings and feeling the cold splashes of rain in the afternoon were some of the best moments of nature during those spring months. But as time progressed and America continued to modernize, changes began to occur in nature, Joseph.”

Joseph’s gaze is so fixated on his Grandpa that he doesn’t notice the notification from his school on his phone stating that school is going to start in 30 minutes. “Keep going Grandpa.”

“Technology began to advance, the government and even some people in the public began to stop caring for the environment. Gasoline and oil began to run out quickly, and thankfully, scientists were able to find more forms of energy, but that didn’t solve the problems that had already begun. The hole in the ozone layer began to increase, which is the reason for these reinforced windows, and the temperature began to gradually increase. It’s almost as if as the need for improved technology and futuristic things got greater, the environment of our world got destroyed more and more.”

Grandpa looks down at his right robotic replacement arm and strokes it. His voice is strained. “I wonder if people would’ve still disregarded the health of nature if they knew that it would lead to the environment that we have today…” Joseph’s Grandpa clears his throat. “Joe, it is getting late. Go get your jacket so that you won’t be late for school. We will talk later kiddo.” His Grandpa walks into the room and the sliding doors close.

Joseph runs to his room and comes back with his jacket, which is visible in the camera frame. The logo stated “UV Ray Protective Suit.” He gazes at the image for a moment, then clicks the red button once more.

“Hello guys, I didn’t realize that I had left the camera on… I learned a lot this morning, the world has changed a lot, and it looks like it’s too late for a change. I can’t believe that there was a time where nature was beautiful.” Joseph takes time to stare out the window, and his slightly happy expression fades into dread. He looks back into the camera.

“Well, I have to head to school. I’ll talk to you guys later. This is Joseph signing out.” 

Airborne drones are becoming commonplace, especially in the civilian world. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, are aircrafts controlled by a pilot from a remote location on the ground. Drones are increasingly being used, and not just for military purposes. They’re used for agriculture, disaster response, energy production, environmental monitoring, construction, and sports activities. Their use has expanded exponentially in recent years, spurred by technological advancements and easy access to affordable high-tech parts. Drones can fly from several minutes to several days, depending on the technology and the mission, and the cost of having a drone ranges from a few hundred dollars for hobbyists to millions of dollars for military purposes. But as happens with most major technological changes in a society, the increased role of drones is raising privacy and public safety concerns.

Although drones are unmanned vehicles and depend mostly on human intelligence, adaptive control systems and artificial intelligence technologies can allow drones to fly without human intervention. Drones are increasingly becoming autonomous, following a pre-programmed mission, and can even make their own decisions while gathering and sending data back to a ground unit.

Drones are becoming popular for military purposes. They are cheaper than a military aircraft, and flying them remotely means there is no danger for the flight crew. Small drones can get into places where humans cannot, and large drones can fly into war zones to gather surveillance or to take part in military strikes. On the plus side, this will reduce the number of active military personnel in war zones, and reduce casualties. Even the possibility of replacing human drone operators with computer algorithms is in discussion, leaving a machine to make the final decision about whether to end a civilian life or to destroy vital infrastructure (this decision is also called the ‘signature strike’). [1]. Such a possibility raises serious questions about the ethics of war, privacy, and public safety.

Law enforcement officers are already using drones to detect people illegally crossing their nation’s borders. It is already in use by cities in the US for monitoring criminals, for crime fighting, car chases, executing search-and-rescue missions, firefighting and basic surveillance. People are interested in using camera-equipped drones to patrol their homes during police raids, to collect their own evidence.

Another proposed use is in the protection and inspection of infrastructures, and monitoring power lines, dams, levees, and gas pipelines to reduce the cost and manpower for these dangerous, dull, and costly jobs. If they are intelligently deployed in civilian life, drones can be useful in keeping people out of harm’s way.

Drones can assist in search and rescue missions after tornadoes, earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters, especially in places not reachable by, or dangerous to, humans. They can locate survivors and report their location to the ground base [2]. Drones can fly through the dark, pick up heat signatures of bodies using infrared cameras, see through smoke using thermal cameras, record footage using night-vision, and pick up hard-to-hear sounds in dangerous locations. Since they are small, they can easily be transported and deployed in disaster areas, and be up in the air in minutes compared to the longer time requirements required for planes and other rescue vehicles.

An example of this is drones that are already in use monitoring abused wildlife in Kenya and rescuing injured skiers in France [3]. Drones are also extremely useful in monitoring wildfires with minimal cost and little risk of loss of life. NASA is already using drones for monitoring hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is monitoring wildlife in the Arctic, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) is mapping remote terrain and performing environmental research.

Drones are becoming an important part of agricultural production. They can help farmers to check if their fields need watering or fertilizing. In Japan, drones are used for precision agriculture, where drones fly over a field and use multispectral cameras to take pictures of the crop and analyze if it is over-watered or under-watered. This allows farmers to precisely determine the right amount water and pesticide to use, and this helps them decrease costs and increase the crop’s yield.

An interesting application of drones is in clean energy production. Some companies are already exploring the use of drones as autonomous wind turbines that would be flown like mechanical kites [4]. The goal is using drones equipped with wind turbines to fly to higher altitudes, where more consistent and powerful wind is available to be harnessed. These drones are lighter and cheaper than wind turbines, and can adjust themselves to the wind streams to maximize their energy harvesting.

Drones are also used by the construction industry. They provide a cost effective way to check the progress of a construction project, help managers inspect hard to reach locations, take architectural photographs, create 3D scans of a building using infrared cameras, survey more precisely, undertake comprehensive safety inspections, and even replace some of a project’s manual labor. Drones recently demonstrated their ability to assemble, brick by brick, a 1:100 scale model of a skyscraper. Researchers are investigating more potential applications of drone technology in construction sector [5].

The most common use of drones will likely be by hobbyists, who have access to cheap, light, camera-equipped machines that can be controlled by smartphones and tablets. Athletes and extreme sports hobbyists are using drones to capture their activities and tricks during snowboarding or skating outings. Climbers have drones follow them for safety and to record and report their progress to base camps. Drones are increasingly being used by amateur or professional photographers to capture footage. While hobbyists can buy drones ready to fly out of the box, many are going the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) route to create customized, specialized aircrafts. Drone hobbyist websites have more than millions of members, and are growing every day. People exchange their experiences, pictures, and schematics, thus enabling their fellow hobbyists to improve their own drones.

Autonomous drone technology is not limited to the skies. Seaborne drones are already deployed in the ocean to monitor coastlines and passageways for pirates [6]. They communicate with an airborne drone for intelligence and can be picked up by a ship or submarine after the mission is completed. They need to be equipped with capabilities to survive for a long time in cold and corrosive seawater, and to tackle the challenges of underwater communication.

The drone industry is growing fast, and is estimated to have created 70,000 jobs and made an economic impact of $13.6 billion in its first three years. With all the benefits this new technology is contributing to our lives, the domestic use of drones has grown; but so have concerns about their privacy, safety, and regulation. Many people are concerned about their potential for abuse. One of the suggestions for government use of drones is limiting their use to a few purposes determined by the law, and specifically for emergency and public safety. Hobbyists and recreational users do not need any special license to fly a drone, but they are encouraged to follow guidelines outlined for public safety. The guidelines mainly suggest operating drones at a sufficient distance from populated areas, and not over or near private properties or lower than 120 meters in altitude. One of the main concerns about the public use of drones is the ease of weaponizing them; they could conceivably be used to attack private targets.

In science fiction movies, intelligent systems and drones can become self-aware and cause serious problems. It is unlikely that drones will become self-aware anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any safety issues about drones. As seen with most secure computer systems, drone can be hacked by a malicious person or group. These groups can take control of the vehicle, access its video feeds, alter data and information sent to ground control units, and spoof GPS systems to manipulate the drone to land or attack a different target.

When technological breakthroughs are achieved in critical areas, as in drones, a series of solid scientific research needs to be conducted before populating the civilian market with the technological products. Governments and civil societies have an important role in regulating the usage of drone. Some of these steps include requiring a warrant for deployment, limiting the data retention time for images and video feeds, establishing an accountability mechanism, and prohibiting the weaponization of domestic drones.

Acknowledgment: This article was produced by Mergeous [7], an online article and project development service for authors and publishers dedicated to the advancement of technologies in the merging realms of science and spiritual thought.

Halil I. Demir is an internet entrepreneur and freelance writer.

References

[1] T. Zakaria and M. Hosenball. “U.S. Drone Guidelines Could Reduce -Signature Strikes,” The Huffington Post, May 23, 2013.

[2] H. Kelly. “Drones: The future of disaster response,” CNN, May 23, 2013.

[3] A. Levy and M. Milian. “Future of Drones: Aerial Assassins or Helpful Hovercrafts?” Bloomberg, May 15, 2013.

[4] K. D. Atherton, “Google Bets $10.7 Million On Drone Intelligence,” Popular Science Magazine, May 16, 2013.

[5] R. Von Ins, “Rise of the Drones,” Georgia Institute of Technology, January 23, 2013.

[6] J. Emspak, “Schools of Sleeper Drones Could Swim Future Seas,” Discovery News, January 25, 2013.

[7] Mergeous, Online article and project development service, mergeous.com

No matter how fast or how far a person runs, the horizon will always be beyond them. This being the case, the real distance and depth of the horizon is inside a person, it is in their mind and perception…

A race I will always remember

Not too long ago, when I was still a little boy, I found myself running from my father’s village to my mother’s, and from my mother’s to another and to another, in the hope of catching up with something that was neither a ball, some other toy, nor a bird, but rather the point, the line where the sky seemed to touch the earth. We call it the “horizon.” That line, that “place,” first presented itself to me hiding right behind the trees to the left of my father’s house. I started out that day walking rather leisurely because the distance between me and the horizon seemed so short. When I observed that the sky had moved, or rather seemed to have moved further away, I hastened my steps. Then I noticed that the sky moved further and further away. Well, being determined to reach the place where the sky certainly touched the ground, I kept walking faster and faster until I found myself running.

I ran for quite a while until I realized that “there”, where the sky and the earth met, was still further away, that it would take me more time and effort than I had thought. I went back—I had to go back—to my father’s village, back to my usual village life because I saw that perhaps much more was involved, that maybe much more effort was called for in order to achieve what I desired, namely, to get to the point where I could touch the sky, where I could climb the sky. I went back to the ordinary, the normal life and experience of the village and of my people. But I did not tell anyone, I did not discuss the experience with anyone, even though I did not stop and could not stop thinking about it. I thought to myself that perhaps a week, a month, maybe a year would suffice for me to reach the place where the sky and the earth embraced. I was absolutely certain that right there in front of me, over there, not too far away, the sky touched the ground. And I thought that perhaps all I needed to do was keep walking, keep running, and keep racing forward, without stopping, without interruptions, without distractions in order to get to where the sky kissed the ground.

Today, thirty-five years later, I have realized that I was not wrong. I was right. The sky did touch the ground. It touches the ground all the time. You may ask “but where and how?” The sky touches the ground in our perception. Look across from your window into the distance. What do you see? Or, go outside and look in the distance. What do you see? The sky is right there, over there, touching the ground, the road, the houses, the trees, the mountains, the sea, and remaining there. But keep in mind that this is all happening in our perception. In perception, things are the way they appear, the way they seem. No rigorous, critical thinking is involved. And this happens so many times, and in fact is happening now; it happens every time that we are not thinking deeply, with attention and effort. It happens every time we fail to allow other perspectives, other possibilities and other possible interpretations to emerge.

The sky touches the earth, embraces and kisses the ground, right there in a fixed position, as long as you do not move. Once you move, it moves. And when you run after it, it too runs, not towards you though, but rather away from you. If you stand still, it stands still. If you stay where you are, it remains where it is. If you move even an inch, it will move. It will never allow you to catch up with it, to touch it; it will never allow you to possess it, to tame it; it will never allow you to take possession of it. And yet, it is always there, “putting everything into perspective.” By that I mean the horizon enables us to see, for without horizon one cannot see much of anything. Think about it! Everything presents itself in horizon. Everything dwells in the horizon, everything is within the confines of the horizon, and depends more or less on this phenomenon. And if I may borrow an expression from Saint Paul’s speech at the Areopagus (Acts 17:28) and be at liberty to use it as I see fit in this context (just as some scholars say he himself was at liberty to do with the same expression from the writing of Epimenides of Knossos (6th Century B.C.)), one can say that “that in which we live and move and have our being” is the horizon.

Standing still, remaining in one fixed position is not in the nature of the horizon. Its every stop (or what appears to be its end, its boundary) is temporary and transitory, like a pilgrim’s stop on a journey whose destination is still far away. It keeps moving, and it invites us to keep moving too, keep working, keep meeting people, keep exploring, keep digging, keep sowing, keep cultivating, keep harvesting, keep looking, keep reading, keep writing, keep thinking, keep talking, keep wondering.

We hear, not infrequently, the expression, “on the horizon/in the horizon.” What does it mean? It means in view, in the possible future, in sight. That which is in or on the horizon appears close, and seems to be approaching; it is as if it’s right there among the things that one hopes to do soon, as something squarely within one’s reach, among the things that one’s abilities can handle. What is in the horizon, then, is something that appears “present” and seems quite achievable.

What is a horizon? And what does it do?

A horizon is inseparable from a living, perceiving human being who is in the open or in the frontier of the open. There are no horizons in closed spaces, closed places. The distance between a living human being and the line where the sky and the earth meet is very wide. It is infinite. It is far, far away. You can only measure it with your eyes, your mind and your soul. You can figure out how long it is only to the extent that your eyes, your mind and your soul can go. An application of any other measuring device will only frustrate you because the moment you start going after it to measure it, it will recede. But the truth is that what you are actually seeing of the horizon is only a small part of it. The bigger part is on the other side of the horizon. Every horizon has at least two parts: a front and a back. The front of the horizon consists of the part you are seeing, and its back consists of the part hidden from you because of the hills and mountains, the earth, the road, the trees, the sea. In fact, the line where the sky seems to touch the earth is really only a perceived curve or a perceived point of contact, but the horizon really goes far and farther away, without end: it stretches into infinity.

All the things we are seeing are in fact standing in the way of the horizon. Similarly, all the things we are thinking right now, all our thoughts and ideas, everything that is presently on our minds can be an obstacle to a deeper and fuller understanding and appreciation of the horizon. We have to let go of all of these things in order to begin to have an idea of the depth and richness of the horizon.

For now, let us focus on the part of the horizon that is visible to us. It is a world, the world that we live in or would like to live in. Normally, it consists of people, people of different religions and/or of no religion at all, people of different languages and cultures, different experiences, different states and walks of life, different situations and aspirations, people driven by different desires, values and visions, people of very deep opinions, inspirations, beliefs and deep convictions other than our own, people heading in a thousand and one directions. This world, this visible side of the horizon also includes animals of many different types and habitats, which eat different kinds of food and have different spans of life. It also includes many different trees, bushes and flowers, and different types of grasses, etc. Mountains and hills and valleys too, rivers and big oceans, streams and creeks, are all part of this side of the horizon. Small and big houses, low and high buildings, shelters and palaces, mud houses and ghettoes are all part of this side of the horizon that we are seeing. But we do not actually see everything that we know is out there, that is all around us, that is over there in front of us…

How do we even know that there is anything out there, that other people are out there? A long walk, travels, meeting people, doing business with people, education, etc. confirm that there are other people out there, other lifestyles, other ways of thinking, other ways of doing things, other attractions, other things that people consider as very precious and worth dying for. We read about these things, have actually met and seen them with our own eyes, have lived with people of different orientations and values, have had some great opportunities to exchange ideas with them. But neither our reading and studying nor our investigative and explorative eyes can exhaust the visible side of the horizon because even the visible side has its own invisible aspects and invisible faces. Let us take for example persons, situations and objects.

From time to time, a person whom I have known for many years, not only surprises me, but also seems to be a surprise to herself/himself whenever s/he says something or does something I could never have thought or imagined her or him doing. And people of this nature are not uncommon.

How about situations? They are similar. Even the most familiar situations often have aspects that are new and different, which we can see if and when we look with more attention and care. And the moment we become used to these, even newer different aspects of the same situation emerge. The same goes for things such as books, clocks, chairs, doors, and so on. A book often presents us with information that we did not see the first time we read it. And if you read it again, you will again see something you missed the second time you read it. If you wish, you can read it again and again, and you will see something new every time. The book will never fail to make you see something new and/or think something new.

Can a chair or a door do something similar? That is, can a chair or a door make you see something new or think something new every time you encounter them? Let us see. A chair, unlike a book, seems to have no generative power. It seems mute and sterile. But can a chair speak and make us think? The answer is yes, it can speak and make us think. No one would disagree that the chair of Pontius Pilate, the chair of a Court Judge, the chair of Saint Peter, and so forth do have a powerful message. Although these chairs I have cited are special, every chair can say something to us and really make us think. For example, chairs for children and for adults make us think different thoughts, which by the way, make us give children appropriate chairs and to adults what is suitable for them. If we did not think differently of these chairs, chances are we would give adults the chairs meant for children and vice-versa, or give the same kind of chairs to everybody, children and adults alike, seriously compromising comfort. And some chairs would even fall apart (that is, if children’s chairs are given to heavy people like me to sit on).

Doors too make us think. For example, the Door of No Return in Goree Island in Dakar, Senegal, and the Door of Hope in Johannesburg, South Africa, makes every visitor think. But again, although these specific references are special, every door, including those that may seem unimposing and insignificant, can really make us think. Every door has a message.

The bottom line is that even the most visible side of the horizon can have aspects that may not be totally obvious and immediately accessible. Therefore, the visible, that which seems completely clear can still make us think because it often has layers, folds, dimensions, messages that lie beneath its surface. There are always other meanings, other messages behind the obvious. And the moment we finish harvesting one message, the moment we finish reading one meaning, the horizon presents us another one, and yet another, and so on and so forth. Inexhaustible indeed, this horizon can constantly give new meaning, hope, color, shape, style, texture, depth, taste and strength to our lives for endless joy and delight, even under very difficult circumstances. Why? Because the horizon has power to liberate us from the present, the immediate, the obvious. As it draws back, so to speak, that is, when we attempt to respond to its invitation into the open, when we dare to go after it, go with it into the deep, when we allow ourselves to move with it and flow with it, then it can open new doors, generate new ideas, launch new beginnings, reveal inroads, illuminate new bridges, disclose exits, uncover new faces, make terrains of other possibilities visible, make cooperation and collaboration possible, make teamwork possible, bring along other solutions, other fertile soils. With the horizon, there are no closed doors, no human being is a finished project, no done deal, no finished once-and-for-all discussions, no insurmountable barriers. The horizon’s open field stretches into infinity.

All of this is but an invitation to read between the lines, i.e., “to resist simplistic interpretations that dogmatically ascribe fixed significations to [things]” (G. Weiss, Refiguring the Ordinary, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2008, p.58).

It is about the need to go on researching other possible meanings and interpretations of a text, to go on searching for other possible answers to certain problems, to appreciate the expanding limits, and to devote more time and energy to the lifelong project of exploration of self and of the world (and of God) (see P. Okogie’s “Horizon: the birthing world” in the Journal of Horizons of Horizons, Vol. 1, no. 1, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, 2012, p.10).

Rev. Dr. Okogie is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics, University of Saint Anselm, Rome, Italy.

“You know, I wasn’t always like this,” began the butterfly. “I used to creep on the ground instead of flying in the air. I used to have gloomy colors and obnoxiously long hair instead of these lovely colors and elegant wings.”

It was really hard for me to believe that the butterfly had ever been in the situation she was describing. I am sure the other fellows in our group were also surprised to hear this, but none of us wanted to interrupt the flow of her beautiful words.

“My situation back then troubled me, indeed. Why was I doomed to get smashed under the feet of others? Why was beauty innate to other creatures while ugliness was my fate? Dissatisfied with my situation, I wanted to change, dreamed to wake up into a new day, desired to breathe a fresh life. My creeping ugly body did not match my spirit within.”

At this point, I couldn’t hold my breath anymore, and asked: “So, what did you do about it? Was it then that you turned into this beautiful state?” The butterfly reacted most unexpectedly to my question. She neither smiled nor gave a humble answer. Without even changing the expression on her face, as if she hadn’t heard me, she continued: “I couldn’t do anything about it.” Then she stopped. You know how long intermissions like this can feel. After a few seconds the butterfly took the word again seriously, as if she had a duty to tell her story, rather than an urge to praise herself.

“In that desperation, I decided to bring all this to an end. I slowly climbed a high tree. From that height, the scene looked very different. I was able to observe things just like the birds. I had found a security that I could never find on the ground. A perfect day to initiate my change. If I wanted to be revived anew, I needed to die first.”

We weren’t expecting to hear such sentences from this unique guest in our forest. Why was she telling us all this anyway? We were all young trees looking forward to our bright futures. The gloom in her words veiled her beauty, and eclipsed our interest in listening to her. But observing the change in our facial expressions, the butterfly continued:

“And slowly, I started tying the rope that I carefully made myself, and rendered myself to the hands of the wind. And just like I had predicted, things started changing very quickly as I descended towards the ground. I realized something that I had never thought before: I belonged to someone who did not want me to perish like this. It was as if time suddenly stopped, and I had a chance to communicate with my Owner. I was ashamed of what I had done, and asked for a second chance, which was given to me. Then I came to find myself hanging from the tree.”

I was thinking that the butterfly was going to conclude with “hanging from the tree in this vibrant beauty.” Astonishingly, there was more to the story of how she gained this beauty. My interest started to build up again, and I observed the same curiosity on my friends’ faces.

“In my anguish and shame, I started covering my body. I wove a small tent around myself. As such, I was alone in my darkness, away from the insults, from the harassments, and from myself. During my retreat, I tried to re-evaluate things and thought about positive ways to change. After a while, I decided to rid myself of my cocoon and do something. But there was one hurdle: I was hanging down in the middle of the air, covered with a genuinely woven house. I had to undo the excellent job I had done, but it wasn’t easy to tear my silken prison apart.

“As small pieces of the house were torn and as I was able to glimpse the daylight, I tried even harder to free myself. When the hole I made was large enough, I squeezed myself through. It was then that I saw my new self, reflected in the puddle below me and gave the most heartfelt praise to my Owner.”

Thus concluded the butterfly’s story of change. She even gave us admonitions about positive ways of making changes in our lives and in ourselves. She also talked about how potent our bodies are in facilitating the process of change.

All this was wholeheartedly embraced in our forest by the young trees, including me at the time. Why? Because we were in the same place where we were born; so we wanted to do something about it. We were all inspired by the butterfly’s story and decided to mobilize ourselves. Even the peaceful nights that used to be filled with the rhythmic voices of crickets were now filled with the whispers of our discussions on how to enact this fundamental change.

No wonder the old trees found this activity among the young outrageous and inappropriate. They thought that we were trying to achieve something against our nature. The time spent on these efforts was regarded as a waste. The old trees first tried to warn us against our “hallucinations,” but it turned out to be a fruitless effort. Then the old trees threatened to block our sunlight by covering us from above. This, too, became a wasted effort when the old trees realized they were engaging in sanctions that would kill their young ones instead of changing their minds. In the mean time, our ideas caught the attention of the newer generations. Upon hearing the whole story regarding the butterfly and our efforts to change, they too joined us in that desire to mobilize. So eventually the old trees decided to wait and see what would happen. After all, we were simply trying to imitate the butterfly.

Ever since that spring when the butterfly shared her story, we all covered ourselves with as many leaves as possible, similar to the cocoon of the butterfly. We were hoping that when the winter winds blew those leaves away, our mobilized selves would come out, just like the flight of the butterfly. We persistently covered ourselves this way year after year, but neither our roots became feet, nor did our branches transform to wings. Eventually, we realized that we were only getting older and that we were wasting our time. No one was out there anymore to advise us, either, because the butterfly had died that same spring, and the older trees shunned us because of our stubborn foolishness.

Once young trees, now experienced and mature, we decided to talk about the failed plan that was supposed to lead us to change. This time, instead of reciting the misleading story of the butterfly, we were going to talk about why this had happened to us and how we should advise our young. We started by analyzing the cautions of the old trees. Although we were not fully able to understand the wisdom behind the words of the elders, we could feel that they carried some implicit good in them.

As our voices undulated in the air, one of the migrating birds heard this talk and made a swift landing near our place of discussion. She quickly started to talk: “You know, we also had a problem among our young, but it was in the opposite direction. They wanted to quit traveling and stay in one place. We even lost some of them last winter when they decided not to migrate.” The unexpected interruption by the bird evoked other questions in our branchy minds. Why was this problem always occurring with the young? And why did they fancy a nature opposite to their own?

We couldn’t come to a conclusion. But one day, a short time after the discussion with the bird, we witnessed a mobile tree and a stationary bird. The tree was being carried behind a huge animal that was making a horrible, obnoxious noise. This was an animal we had never seen. To our surprise, the two Men who were riding the animal had captured a bird and somehow made her into a stationary bird that could constantly stand on the walls surrounding their home. Neither the mobile tree nor the stationary bird induced joy in the forest.

The mobilization of the trees and the stationing of the birds continued until one day when there were hardly any trees and birds left. Something was terribly wrong because none of this brought any good to our forest. The few remaining trees wanted to stay where they were born, and the few remaining birds wanted to fly.

On a once breezy and warm, but now unusually hot spring day, a butterfly appeared in the place where our forest used to be. She carried a poetry book she had composed. As the butterfly voiced her yearning for the glorious trees in the land and the soaring birds in the skies, tears of regret filled our eyes. And her verses of nostalgia ended with a prayer:

Oh the Unchanging One despite the transients,
Oh the Eternal One in the face of all mortals,
Oh the Creator of all animals that are now only in the tales,
Resurrect nature, we implore with our silence.

Seth Mette has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at West Virginia University. He has a special interest in psychological fiction.

It was around dawn, and the day was not yet fully light. Rain the night before had left a thick cloud covering the scene. The music of bugs and the chanting of birds filled the air. Against a background of a slight breeze, which provided a smooth and continuous whistle, consecutive, rhythmic thumps could be heard. These thumps were the sounds of a giant’s footsteps as he was walking to work early in the morning.

Meanwhile, my grandpa and his friends were enjoying the water on the walkway. But a hot day was soon going to make the walkway the death bed of many of his friends. Aside from the heat of the day, the footsteps of the giants would bring to an end the lives of many others. Neither he nor his friends were aware of any of this. They were simply enjoying their water on the walkway.

That morning, the giant who was walking to work bent down towards my grandfather, grabbed a thin stick from the ground, and tried to kill him. Not ready for such an attack in the midst of his breakfast, my grandfather was stupefied, did not know what to do. He just spiraled away to escape the giant’s attack, as we always do in case of danger. But all was in vain; the giant would not give up.

Finally, the giant accomplished what he was trying to do, and thus my grandfather was saved from both the heat and the giant footsteps. It turned out that my grandpa had misunderstood the giant. Normally, other giants would walk on us, or would ignore us, and this giant was the same; or so he had thought. However, this one was trying to put the stick under my grandpa to lift him and place him onto the soil where he could be safe. My grandpa said that he appreciated this help more later when he heard his friends dying on that same walkway.

The story of a giant who was unlike others spread from the family to friends, and became known all around. The world underground rejoiced at the existence of this one giant who was not like others… Maybe there were other giants like him, too; and the underground world kept praying for those giants that they might be protected from things they were unaware of, just as that giant had saved my grandfather from things that he was unaware of.

After my grandfather’s times, his story became a nostalgic tale for the elders and a bedtime story for little ones. The world aboveground became worse than the world underground. Instead of long trees above with their roots under ground, you would see huge, tall rocks in both places. The rocks underground provided water to everyone, but the rocks aboveground only provided water to the giants. The roots of the plants and trees used the marrow of the earth to embellish it, but the long channels that the giants sank into the ground were like huge veins draining the earth to death. We ceased praying for them.

One day, we heard screaming among the giants about an asteroid heading directly towards the earth. The only thing they were worried about was the end of their own lives. We were not surprised by this selfish reaction to that event because of their selfish past on the earth. And the asteroid came…

It was foggy again, but not due to clouds; it was quite dark, but not due to dawn. The fog and the darkness were due to dust spread over the face of the earth. We were fortunate to be able to sustain our lives under such harsh conditions. As for the giants, they were not suffering much from the conditions, as they had taken shelter in special chambers built only for them. Being some of the few survivors of the impact, we were of significant use to them. After using the entire earth selfishly, now they were enslaving us. So, they still lacked our prayers for their protection. Could they ever figure out, despite their hardened hearts, why such tragedy had befallen them?

Not long after that time, we witnessed something totally incredible. One of the giants came out of the protection chambers to do something that was completely unexpected. He looked through his goggles at the sky and tried to take a deep breath. As he was coughing because of the dust in the air, he opened the nylon bag he was carrying. He sat on the ground, dug a hole with his hands, and uncovered the thing in the bag: a daisy plant. Was he going to plant it? But why? The chances of its survival were almost none. What benefit would it bring him, anyway, even if it survived for a day? He looked pleased with what he was doing. He even smiled at a worm that was escaping the hole he had dug for the flower. What was going on in his mind?

It was just at the moment he was about to plant the flower that the earth suddenly started shaking like crazy. The planet was dying because of the deep cracks caused by the impact of the asteroid. Now, neither the giant nor the flower had any chance of survival. He did not know what to do for a while; then he started shedding tears: “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

Then he saw the deep cracks forming near him, shaking and growing. It was as if the planet had started shouting at him in thousands of voices. He could not stand the quakes and fell down next to the hole, as if it were he, instead of the flower, that was going to be buried in it. At that moment, this giant was no different from us: lying on the ground, and seeking his way out of this doom. Who was there to help him? His cries were now screams: “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

All of a sudden, he stopped crying and started talking to someone, but we could not see anybody around: “Please, hold me tight. Do not leave me….” He continued, “But I can’t… I can’t….” Then, he tried to reach the flower that had rolled away from him when he fell down. He grabbed it and cradled it at his chest; but struck by a stone falling from one of the nearby rocks, he fell unconscious. As he was sinking into the growing cracks, we uttered a prayer for a giant who had planted a flower in his heart… The last prayer of worms, the last prayer for giants…

Seth Mette has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at West Virginia University. He has a special interest in psychological fiction.

Dating back to the sixteenth century,¹ the Grand Champs des Morts was unique among Istanbul’s necropolises, with burial grounds for followers of both Islam and Christianity in close proximity. Beginning at Taksim (roughly on the site where the Ataturk Cultural Center now stands) and extending down the slopes of Gumussuyu and Findikli lay the graves of Muslims, while the area stretching northward toward Harbiye was divided into separate sections for the city’s various Christian communities. The English traveler Julia Pardoe describes the site in 1836:

The first plot of ground, after passing the barrack [the artillery barracks of Selim III at Taksim], is the grave-yard of the Franks; and here you are greeted on all sides with inscriptions in Latin; injunctions to pray for the souls of the departed; flourishes of French sentiment; calembourgs² graven into the everlasting stone, treating of roses and reine Marguerites; concise English records of births, deaths, ages, and diseases; Italian elaborations of regret and despair; and all the common-places of an ordinary burial-ground.³

Immediately in a line with the European cemetery, is the burial-ground of the Armenians. It is a thickly-peopled spot; and as you wander beneath the leafy boughs of the scented acacias, and thread your way among the tombs, you are struck by the peculiarity of their inscriptions. The noble Armenian character is graven deeply into the stone; name and date are duly set forth; but that which renders an Armenian slab. . . peculiar and distinctive, is the chiseling upon the tomb the emblem of the trade or profession of the deceased.

The Turkish cemetery stretches along the slope of the hill behind the barrack, and descends far into the valley. Its thickly-planted cypresses form a dense shade, beneath which the tall head-stones gleam out white and ghastly. The grove is intersected by footpaths, and here and there a green glade lets in the sunshine, to glitter upon many a gilded tomb. Plunge into the thick darkness of the more covered spots, and for a moment you will almost think that you stand amid the ruins of some devastated city. You are surrounded by what appears for an instant to be the myriad fragments of some mighty whole; but the gloom has deceived you-you are in the midst of a Necropolis-a City of the Dead.⁴

The vastness and natural beauty of the Grand Champs des Morts captured the attention of foreign residents and visitors to Istanbul alike, and few travel accounts and diaries from the past fail to mention-even if only in passing reference-the cemetery on the outskirts of Pera. The Grand Champs des Morts presented a sharp contrast to the densely packed inner-city churchyards which served as the principal burial grounds in so many of Europe’s cities up to the nineteenth century. Although some chroniclers considered the size of the Pera cemetery, as well as the great necropolises bordering other districts of Istanbul, a hindrance to urban expansion and development,⁵ the advantage of such a spacious, sylvan tract of land for burial of the dead was also recognized.

Not far from this [Taksim] we entered upon one of those vast burying-grounds which form one of the most conspicuous features of every Turkish city. . . In a few words. . . I may state that the cemetery. . . covers an area of more than 100 acres, and that a thick forest of cypresses (resembling in shape the poplar, but with a dark green foliage) overspreads it with a solemn shade, extremely appropriate to its ordinary uses. . .⁶

Cemetery planners in Western Europe, spurred on by public calls for improvements to the hygiene and appearance of local burial grounds, cited precedents in Istanbul-as well as other areas of the East-in their effort to close inner-city churchyards and replace them with larger, more salubrious cemeteries outside settled areas. This process of reform essentially began in France during the eighteenth century. It was encouraged by authors such as the naturalist Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), who, in his celebrated atudes de la Nature, praised the Turkish custom of burying the dead in the countryside (a tradition also observed in classical antiquity and contemporary China) and recommended the implementation of similar practices in Paris. He proposed “landscaped lysces as the burial-place of the great and good, and public cemeteries (essentially landscaped gardens where the dead would be buried and, if prosperity allowed, monuments erected). . . Public cemeteries should be created in the vicinity of the city, planted with cypresses, pines, and fruit-trees, and monuments erected in such a setting could only induce profound moral feelings and tender melancholy in those who visited them.”⁷

By the late 1700s, new methods for disposing of the dead were of absolute necessity in most of Europe’s major cities, and not simply for esthetic purposes, but for maintaining public health. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the municipality of Paris took the first steps by closing old burial grounds, such as the ancient Cimetire des Innocents, and establishing new cemeteries, including the famed Pre-Lachaise, Montparnasse, and Montmartre early in the next. A similar course of action occurred somewhat later in London, commencing with the opening of Kensal Green in 1832, the first of seven new private cemeteries founded over the next decade on the outskirts of the city.⁸ Finally, in 1852, all graveyards inside the city limits were closed with the passage into law of the Metropolitan Burial Act. By that time, London’s churchyards, many dating from the Middle Ages, were in a critical state. One contemporary journal, The Builder, asserted in 1843 that 50,000 bodies yearly were piled one on top of the other in these overcrowded graveyards, where-left to putrefy and rot-they gave out exhalations and darkened the air with vapors. Charles Dickens cynically portrayed the grim situation in the Uncommercial Traveller:

Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely pressed upon by houses, so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever look down into them from their smokey windows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lopsided, the gravemounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter’s daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place . . .⁹

Considering the dismal, unwholesome state of burial grounds in their own countries, it is no wonder that Europeans often waxed eloquent about the cemeteries of Istanbul, highlighting the aura of life which they engendered. Julia Pardoe offers a particularly vivid description of the burial grounds in the Ottoman capital, where the present generation readily merged with those of the past.

[The Turk] looks upon death calmly and without repugnance; he does not connect it with ideas of gloom and horror, as we are too prone to do in Europe,-he spreads his burial places in the sunniest spots-on the crests of the laughing hills, where they are bathed in the light of the blue sky; beside the crowded thoroughfares of the city, where the dead are, as it were, once more mingled with the living,-in the green nooks that stretch down to the Bosphorus, wherein more selfish spirits would have erected a villa, or have planted a vineyard. He identifies himself with the generation which has passed away-he is ready to yield his place to that which is to succeed his own.¹⁰

For the cemetery reformers of Europe, such descriptions offered an ideal in their quest for more wholesome, esthetically appealing burial grounds. Located in the hilly countryside on the fringes of the city, the Grand Champs des Morts and Istanbul’s other great necropolises served as a model for those who strove to create new cemeteries for the sanitary disposal of the dead, as well as provide an idyllic environment for the expression of one’s most tender feelings and deepest sentiments. Contemporary author Samuel Taylor Coleridge even commented on the emotive aspect of Turkish burial grounds.

Nothing can make amends for the want of the soothing influences of nature, and for the absence of those types of renovation and decay which the fields and woods offer to the notice of the serious and contemplative mind. To feel the force of this sentiment, let a man only compare in imagination, the unsightly manner in which our monuments are crowded together in the busy, noisy, unclean, and almost grassless churchyard of a large town, with the still seclusion of a Turkish cemetery in some remote place, and yet further sanctified by the grove of cypresses in which it is embosomed.¹¹ /

Specific reference to the Grand Champs des Morts and other Turkish cemeteries as archetypes to imitate in the West also appear in the writings of John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843), one of the most influential cemetery reformers of the nineteenth century. A Scottish landscape gardener, Loudon proposed that burial grounds should be on elevated ground, distant enough from urban centers as not to endanger the health of the populace, yet near enough to lessen the time and expense of funerals and encourage visits by the living to the tombs of the dead. To make the site attractive, he favored a garden-like setting, and suggested the planting of various types of trees and shrubs. Istanbul’s necropolises offered exemplary models of these principles, and Loudon quoted descriptions of them in his works on burial ground planning and design. “The Turkish cemeteries are generally out of the city, on rising ground, planted with cedars, cypresses, and odoriferous shrubs, whose deep verdure and graceful forms bending in every breeze give a melancholy beauty to the place, and excite sentiments very congenial to its destination.”¹²

Besides the location of Istanbul’s cemeteries in the midst of nature and removed from the habitations of the living, the local tradition of single interments also impressed European observers. As Julia Pardoe remarked, the remains of the dead were not disturbed once laid to rest, a practice followed in both the Muslim and Christian burial grounds of the Grand Champs des Morts. “There is no burying and reburying on the same spot, as with us. The remains of the departed are sacred.”¹³ In stark contrast, Europeans-largely due to space restrictions in their heavily populated cities-regularly opened existing graves and filled them with new cadavers, to the point that some churchyards became pestilential pits, seriously endangering public health. By the late eighteenth century these unsanitary conditions had become intolerable. Through the influence of reformers, many of whom took inspiration from the burial practices of the Ottomans, new laws were instituted regulating methods of disposing of the dead. A French decree passed in 1804, for instance, prohibited burial in common graves, where the dead were stacked up one on top of the other.¹⁴ Instead, each cadaver was to be buried in its own space, dug to a specific depth and separated from other graves by a set distance, a method of sepulture eventually adopted in other European countries as well.

More than Ottoman burial practices, however, the unique social life which revolved around Istanbul’s cemeteries, especially in the Grand Champs des Morts, aroused the interest of foreigners. Both Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the city followed distinct rituals for remembering their dead, and families of all religious persuasions made regular visits to their respective burial grounds, maintaining their link with the generations which had preceded them. The pleasant surroundings of the cemeteries (places to avoid in Europe’s municipalities) encouraged this communion with the departed. Moreover, the great necropolises were more than resting places for the dead. “The Champs des Morts,” as Julia Pardoe recounts, “is the promenade of the whole population-Turk, Frank, Greek, and Armenian. . .”¹⁵

It was known to the locals as a place of keyif, or an area connected with ease and enjoyment.¹⁶ Spacious, fresh, green, and in close proximity to the residential quarters of Pera, the burial ground served as a kind of parkland-an attractive area of rest and relaxation for the populace of Istanbul. With whatever views they pay these visits, it is certain that the burying-ground is their favorite resort, where they spend many of their spare hours. Whole families, parents and little children, may be seen gathered around a tomb in silence and seriousness, or in animated and joyous converse. All the burying-grounds, Turkish, Jewish, and Christian, are chief places of public resort.¹⁷

The Grand Champs des Morts even had a cafe at the crest of the hill overlooking Dolmabahce, where customers could while away the day smoking water pipes, drinking Turkish coffee, and gazing out at the sparkling waters of the Bosphorus in the distance.¹⁸ Itinerant vendors also wandered through the cemetery, offering refreshments to visitors. Water sellers usually followed in their wake, carrying huge dripping jars and shouting their distinctive cry buz gibi su! (ice-cold water),¹⁹ ready to quench the thirst of those strolling or lounging among the tombs. Yet, perhaps the most fascinating sight for Europeans were the public fairs held in the necropolis. More than just a place for commemoration, quiet contemplation, and repose, the Grand Champs des Morts was also the site of lively festivals and celebrations. On such occasions, the burial grounds—primarily those of the Christians—were transformed into an animated spectacle of gaiety and amusement. Julia Pardoe describes in colorful detail one such fte for the living amongst the monuments of the dead.

I have already spoken elsewhere of the indifference, if not absolute enjoyment with which the inhabitants of the East frequent their burying grounds; but on the occasion of this festival I was more impressed than ever by the extent to which it is carried. The whole of the Christian cemetery had assumed the appearance of a fair. . . Grave-stones steadied the poles which supported the swings—divans, comfortably overlaid with cushions, were but chintz-covered sepulchers—the kibaub merchants had dug hollows to cook their dainties under the shelter of the tombs, and the smoking booths were amply supplied with seats and counters from the same wide waste of death. Every hundred yards that we advanced, the scene became more striking. One long line of diminutive tents formed a temporary street of eating-houses; there were kibaubs, pillauf, fritters, pickled vegetables, soups, rolls stuffed with fine herbs, sausages, fried fish, bread of every quality, and cakes of all dimensions. . . . Here and there a flat tomb, fancifully covered with gold-embroidered handkerchiefs, was overspread with sweetmeats and preserved fruits; while in the midst of these rival establishments, groups of men were seated in a circle, wherever a little shade could be obtained, smoking their long pipes in silence, with their diminutive coffee-cups resting on the ground beside them. The wooden kiosk overhanging the Bosphorus was crowded; and many a party was snugly niched among the acacias, with their backs resting against the tombs, and the sunshine flickering at their feet.²⁰

Undoubtedly, Europeans were amazed by the merging of the realms of the living and the dead that occurred at Istanbul’s Grand Champs des Morts, where, as French embassy member Charles Pertusier remarked, ‘those who weep are not disturbed by the lyric songs of joy, and those who laugh pay no attention to those who weep.’²¹ Visiting—much less taking one’s pleasure in—burial grounds would have been almost inconceivable in the West. However, in the first half of the nineteenth century, this had already begun to change with the closing of inner-city churchyards and the creation of cemeteries on the periphery of urban areas in Europe. Planted with a rich variety of trees and shrubs, the burial grounds founded in Paris and London during this era constituted a distinctly new style. Essentially funerary gardens, they served both as cemeteries and parklands. Burial grounds such as Pere Lachaise, Montmartre, Kensal Green, and Highgate became renowned for their natural beauty, and were frequented—much like today—both by mourners wishing to commemorate the dead as well as visitors seeking a quiet spot for meditation and repose. Ironically, even as Europeans in the nineteenth century were opening new burial grounds influenced by models from Istanbul, sections of the very cemeteries from which they had derived inspiration (including portions of the Grand Champs des Morts) were being lost in the wake of rapid urban development. During the course of this transformation—spurred on by a desire to rebuild the city in contemporary Western fashion—it was inevitable that many of Istanbul’s old burial grounds would lessen in size, or vanish completely from the map. The city was unique in that so many of its immediate environs were taken up by vast necropolises for the dead, a conspicuous feature which left a distinct impression on foreign travelers, such as Stephen Olin, who in 1853 remarked on the loss of the cemeteries in the wake of urban growth.

Indeed, so vast a space has been devoted to the dead around Istanbul, that it is no longer possible to respect the sanctity of their abode without interfering greatly with the convenience of the living, and even the entire sacrifice of public convenience. Immense as the city is, I am quite sure that much more ground is occupied by tombs and graves than by the habitations of the living. The whole country about Constantinople, Scutari, and Pera is occupied in this way, and a vast number of tombs and burying grounds are enclosed within the walls. In forming roads, streets, and in building, it is no longer possible to spare them, and one often treads upon causeways or pavements made of sculptured grave-stones and monuments.²²

Between 1840 and 1910, the area of Istanbul stretching northward from Taksim to li was transformed from open countryside to densely inhabited residential settlement. Early nineteenth-century maps of Istanbul show much of the area in this direction taken up by the non-Muslim burial grounds of the Grand Champs des Morts, with the Frankish section directly in the path of the main route of expansion. Already, by 1842, this burial ground was being whittled down, as a contemporary account by Reverend William Goodell attests. One of the founders of the American Board mission to the Armenians at Istanbul, Goodell had lost his nine-year-old son, Constantine Washington, to gastric typhoid in 1841 and buried him in the Frankish section of the Grand Champs des Morts.

February 18, 1842. On account of the encroachments. . . on the Frank burying ground, I had to remove the body of our beloved boy. The grave . . . had been dug deep, and the coffin was scarcely damp. Every thing was sweet and still. The new grave which we have prepared a few rods distant was also deep and dry; and there we laid the body, to rest in its quiet bed till the resurrection morning. Beloved child, farewell!²³

However, little Constantine’s tranquility lasted far less than expected, disturbed again by a flurry of construction in the early 1860s, including the widening of the main road running from Taksim to Pangalti. In July 1863, the remains of more than a dozen Americans, including those of Constantine Washington Goodell, were exhumed from the old Frankish burial ground in the Grand Champs des Morts. They were transferred, along with their grave markers, to a new Protestant cemetery in Ferikiy—created by order of Sultan Abdulmecit I in the 1850s—for re-interment.24 The land occupied by the former burial ground was turned into a public park (in a modern Western sense), a project finally completed six years later with the opening of Taksim Garden in 1869.²⁵ As the urban environment around Taksim expanded in succeeding decades, the other burial grounds of the Grand Champs des Morts also disappeared. The Armenian cemetery, which lay to the north of the Frankish burial ground, was still delineated on the 1925—26 Pervititch insurance maps of Istanbul, but labeled as ‘ex-Cimetire Armenien,’ apparently indicating that it had ceased to be an active place of interment. Most of the Muslim burial grounds which had covered the slopes of Gumussuyu and Findikli had already vanished by the First World War; an aerial photograph taken from a balloon at that time shows a small portion—evident as a thick patch of cypresses—still straddling the side of the hill between the Taksim barracks an the military hospital in Gumussuyu.²⁶

The scant remains of the once great necropolis would cease to exist by the mid-twentieth century.²⁷ All the while, as the great cemetery shrank—sacrificed for the sake of public convenience—reformers in Europe were transforming the spatial relationship of the living and dead in the West. The nineteenth century witnessed an innovative concept in European burial ground design, with the introduction of expansive, magnificently landscaped cemeteries. Serene and picturesque, they served as additional public parks in many towns and cities. Whereas the small, noxious churchyards of previous ages had been shunned, the new necropolises were considered an ideal place for a relaxing stroll or family outing, not to mention a site of regular pilgrimage to pay respects to the well-loved dead. This shift in custom and attitude was the culmination of several decades of reform, which—to no small extent—was inspired by the traditions of sepulture in other lands, including the Ottoman empire. Remarkably, at a time when the Ottomans were actively borrowing ideas and institutions from Europe in an effort to modernize the empire, their centuries-old customs of burial and commemoration of the dead helped fuel a vital social advance in the very countries they looked to for guidance. At the same time, urban development in the Ottoman capital, influenced by Western models, led to the closure of the Grand Champs des Morts—Istanbul’s ‘City of the Dead,’ a world-renowned necropolis which had provided inspiration, as well as an ideal, for the cemetery reformers of Europe.

Footnotes

1. By some accounts, the earliest interments at the Grand Champs des Morts date to c. 1560, when Istanbul was struck with a severe epidemic of plague, and the open fields around Taksim were used to bury the great numbers of dead; see Istanbul Ansiklopedisi, s.v. ‘Ermeni Mezarliklari.’ The tombstone of a Dutch physician, Willem Quackelbeen, who died of the disease in 1561, offers physical evidence of this conjecture. It is currently located in the Roman Catholic cemetery at Ferikiy, where it was most likely transferred when the Frankish section of the Grand Champs des Morts closed in the mid-1800s, see A.H. de Groot, Old Dutch Graves at Istanbul, Archivum Ottomanicum 5 (1973): 6. Robert Walsh, chaplain to the British Embassy at Istanbul in the 1830s, recounted in his memoirs that the earliest grave-marker in the Frankish burial ground was that of Ludovicus Chizzolo, a Jesuit who succumbed to the plague in 1585, see R. Walsh, A Residence at Constantinople, vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1838), 441.
2. Calembourg: a pun, or play on words.
3. Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 4th ed. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1854), 51.
4. Ibid., 53—54.
5. For instance, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, writing in 1717, commented: ‘The burying fields about it (i.e., Istanbul) are certainly much larger than the whole city. ‘Tis surprising what a vast deal of land is lost this way in Turkey. Sometimes I have seen burying places of several miles, belonging to very inconsiderable villages. . . .’ See Hans-Peter Laqueur, ‘Cemeteries in Orient and Occident: The Historical Development,’ in Cimetires et Traditions Funcraires dans le Monde Islamique (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1996), 2: 3.
6. An American, Sketches of Turkey in 1831 and 1832 (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), 158.
7. James Stevens Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Ltd.), 17.
8. These included West Norwood (1837); Highgate (1839); Brompton, Nunhead, and Abney Park (1840); and Tower Hamlets (1841).
9. Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller (London: Oxford, 1860) 233.
10. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 36.
11. John Claudius Loudon, ‘On the Laying Out, Planting, and Managing of Cemeteries and on the Improvement of Churchyards.’ The Gardener’s Magazine, 1843, p. 100.
12. Ibid., 405.
13. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 50.
14. Thomas A. Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, 169—70.
15. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 50.
16. Charles White, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844, vol. 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1846), 15-16.
17. Stephen Olin, Greece and the Golden Horn (New York: Carlton & Philips, 1854), 249.
18. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 51.
19. White, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844, 1: 15—16.
20. Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, 134—35.
21. Petusier further states: ‘To form a correct idea of these heterogeneous scenes, we must be on the spot, for no description can do justice to them; and even when we see them, for the first time, it appears such a complete illusion, that we can scarsely conceive its reality.’ See Charles Petusier, Picturesque Promenades in and near Constantinople and on the Waters of the Bosphorus (London: Sir Richard Phillips and Co., 1820), 96.
22. Olin, Greece and the Golden Horn, 219.
23. E.D.G. Prime, Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell, D.D. (Robert Carter and Brothers, 1876), 275.
24. Burial Registry of the Ferikiy Protestant Cemetery, no. 331—343, 1863, Governing Board of the Ferikiy Protestant Cemetery, Istanbul, Turkey.
25. Zeynep Celik, The Remaking of Istanbul, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1986, 69.
26. For a copy of this image, see Celik Gulersoy, Taksim: Bir Meydanin Hikayesi (Istanbul: Istanbul Kitapligi, 1986), 37.
27. Some tombstones from the Frankish section of the Grand Champs des Morts still survive in the Protestant and Catholic cemeteries in Istanbul’s Ferikay district, where they were transferred after the old burial ground closed in the mid-1800s.

A person living fifty years ago would have found nothing extraordinary in this verse. Yet it is, read in the light of what we know now of atmospheric physics, extraordinarily rich in meaning and significance.

The materialists of the last century regarded rain as the simple precipitation of water vapour and even expected, in their godless arrogance, to be able to produce rain at will. Moreover, they ridiculed those who would pray for rain. It was not realized at that time that the phenomenon of rainfall, i.e. the conversion of a cloud into rain, is not such a simple event after all. An atheistic science was unable to pose, let alone seek to answer, a number of key questions:

1. How can vapour, which is regarded as gaseous water, remain in the same form in atmospheric strata, such as the Siberian skies, where temperatures can drop to forty degrees below zero? Why does it not fall as ice blocks?

2. How does the size of raindrops come about, and in what measure and form do raindrops descend to earth? What are the preconditions for the formation of raindrops of such a convenient size and shape?

3. How does a cloud vaporize, and how and whence does the salt in clouds come to be there, seeing that salt cannot be vaporized at the boiling point of water?

Over the last twenty years, rational-if still only partial-answers have been found to these puzzling questions. Let us now re-read the sacred verse, and identify its relevant points:

a. God regards rain as a physical event of the same order of significance as the resurrection of the dead. That is the meaning of His saying that we will be brought forth from the earth just as He has sent water from the sky in due measure and brought a dead land to life.

b. The Qur’an describes rain as a carefully measured descent of water, the idea of ‘measure’ being conveyed in the phrase bi-qadarin which indicates an ordered and calculated, willed and deliberate, measuring-the definition of a mathematical program.

c. ‘…and We raise to lift therewith a dead land.’ This sentence, the central portion of the verse, is likewise no ordinary statement. It refers directly and specifically to a dead land being raised to life; it does not say ‘plants emerge from it’. We shall examine the implications of this choice of phrasing below.

Let us now briefly review the scientific aspects of the miracle of rain. The results of the latest research have shed light on many previously unknown points relating water, clouds and rain. In doing so, they provide a wonderful exposition of the verse we are considering. We may summarise these points as follows:

1. A study done in the United States by Vincent J. Schaeffer has revealed that particles of water do not freeze down to -40 C when they are very fine and pure. Water has to be impure and formed of large masses in order to freeze at 0 C. A cloud is a special physical structure that is formed of water vapour which is immediately converted into minute water droplets. It therefore does not share the properties of ordinary water. Atmospheric clouds do not freeze and descend even at -30 C.

2. Clouds are formed by the agglomeration of tiny water droplets around particles of salt or cosmic dust. These tiny nuclei constitute the basis for rain. The origin of cosmic dust is unknown; also, the way in which the dust particles become lodged in the cloud is not yet well understood. However, it is believed that the water at the ocean surface participates in the vaporization process by contributing particles of salt.

3. It is conjectured that there are about one billion water particles per cubic millimeter during cloud formation. There are 50-500 cloud droplets per cubic centimeter in clouds. How these droplets are converted into raindrops is a matter of considerable controversy.

4. Up until 1950, the theory of Bergeron-Findeisen was the most widely accepted explanation of cloud droplets. According to Bergeron-Findeisen, the water droplets first form condensation nuclei, and raindrops then coalesce around them.

However, according to more recent studies, the growth of a cloud droplet over time proceeds concomitantly with various circumstances. A drop of water gradually assumes the nuclear state, overcoming conditions even of forty degrees below zero, and produces rain through a very complex equation:

5. As for the production of rain, minute water particles first coalesce around the condensation nucleus. Then, as they grow, the surface area of these water particles increases as they approach the ground. The increase in surface area in turn allows the velocity of the raindrop to be checked by air friction, with the result that rainfall acquires a gentle descent. This balancing process is a miracle of Divine compassion: by the time the raindrop touches ground, it has slowed down to make a soft landing, almost as if by a parachute. The equation for this descent and balanced speed is:

In the light of current scientific knowledge, the sentence Who sends down rain from the sky in due measure can only mean to us that the descent of rain is a matter of the finest, most subtle calculation. Linking it to the latter part of the verse, it is a miracle of Divine science akin to the raising of the dead.

Present day atmospheric physics also regards rain formation and rainfall as a scientific wonder, and many volumes have been devoted to the subject. Interested readers may usefully consult Robert Byes’ Elements of Cloud Physics and Louis J. Nin’s Cloud Physics and Cloud Seeding.

We now come to the implications of the second sentence in the verse: and we raise to life therewith a dead land.

When soil is dry, it is apparently lifeless. In fact the soil is very much alive, needing rain for its life to he activated. What does science have to say about this?

There are a million times a million bacteria in a gram of soil. These bacteria become wholly inactive, dormant, when it does not rain for a long time. It is as if they change into lifeless genetic codes. All these microbes revive when rain falls, and initiate a large production campaign beginning with nitrogen fixation. Their activity gives life in turn to thousands of small organisms. It is as if a dead underground city has come to life. Fertilizers form, the seeds of innumerable small plants revive, opening channels under the ground with their roots, like the roads of a city. Next, small insects and ants, each with their own nests, burrow under the earth, making it comparable to a large city. This is how a ‘dead land’ is revived.

What is the life-giving secret of rain? This part of the verse directs our attention to the connection of rain, and so of water, with life.

The basic chemical substance of living things is a bridge of hydrogen, lending continuity to the life of an organism, which we call the ‘hydrogen bonds’. The hydrogen is changed frequently, forming new bonds and transferring vitality. Since this hydrogen can be replaced only by the hydrogen produced during the ionization of water, water is indispensable for life.

This rule holds for all living things. A dehydrated organism is like a frozen skeleton even if it preserves its DNA and its genetic code: it can neither move nor reproduce. When water arrives and donates hydrogen from its separating H and OH ions, the code of life jumps into action. This is easily seen, particularly in the case of microbes. In more developed organisms, vitality cannot be restored even when water arrives because the tissue layers have been damaged by dehydration. The ‘revival of the dead land’ alludes to such profound biological laws.

We now turn to the last part of the verse: even so will you be raised [from the dead]. Our resurrection, the verse here declares, is a similar activation by Divine command of our codes remaining in the soil. It declares that just as the rain activates the genetic codes in a dead land and suddenly regenerates life, the codes will be processed and revived with the speed of a computer as soon as the Divine Will gives the order: ‘Come to life, arise.’ And finally, the analogy with rain means that God, Who gives life under the ground by sending a hydrogen ion, can doubtless also restore us to life when He wills.

Approximately ten billion human beings have lived on earth since Adam. The size of each individual’s code is about 1 micron; if you collected them all, they would not fill a glass. If God were to pour the genetic codes of all the humans He created from a glass into the soil, including those whose codes have been lost, and were to say ‘Now, Be!’, all human beings would be recreated in the twinkling of an eye

This is the similitude that God provides through this verse, for those possessed of knowledge with understanding. In effect, He is declaring: ‘Just as I have given life to an entirely lifeless land by means of a raindrop, it is no trouble at all for Me to reactivate the hydrogen in your biological genetic codes.’

trembling like the candlelight. At break of day

he walks amid mountains splitting with grief;

and he would desire their time of happiness,

though himself in Paradise.

Wherever he looks, darkness prevails:

lush-green hills, jewel-like islands, all are

bathed in gloom. For him each new day

begins a new autumn: the people’s hopes

tumbling like leaves, his spirit bowed

under the weight of their sorrows.

His heart beats in fear of new misfortunes,

his eyes burn with the fever of anxiety:

nights are slow and long: mornings freshen

hopes and pass; on his lips still linger

the songes of endurance.

At times brimful of high, ecstatic hopes, so

exalted he could touch the edge of the Infinite,

he calls out in a voice like impassioned thunder.

and if the people hear, their hearts echo

his passionate ardour.

Unseen by others, noble aims wrestle in his mind;

the holiness of his cause colours the ground he treads.

He resolves to set, each day, one fellow-traveller

upon the right road, in the hope that day is the day

when the gloom shall disperse.

At times, forces of unbelief knock him, everyone,

senseless; and persecutions, like bloody spikes.

are thrust into his soul. At times, spring fragrances

fan the air around him and gentle breezes blow

with diverse, subtle perfumes.

***

Hibernators are intensely active in summer. A part of that activity is building temporary burrows for summer use only. Ground squirrels, (Spermophilus citellus) for example, can build hundreds of such temporary shelters over a single summer, on average 15 shelters in a 10m2 area of open field. These shelters have only the one nest compartment, usally between 30 and 50cm below ground level. By contrast, their shelters for hibernation, sometimes as much as 3m below ground level, are intended for long, repeated use and contain a number of compartments-one for storing large quantites of food (usally dry seeds), one for use as a ‘toilet’, and a third for sleeping.

Before hibernation, animals prepare themselves for the hardship of the very long period of cold by storing up large amounts of fat in adipose tissue under the skin, up to some 40 % of total body weight. These fats are composed of fatty acids which typically have ten or fewer than ten carbon atoms and are consturcted with some double bonds between the carbon atoms of the chain and their esters with glycerides. These compounds provide the ideal energy source needed during hibernation because lipids yield twice the energy yielded by carbohydrates and proteins. Moreover, these fatty acids need very little oxygen in their degradation/conversion to energy.

Blood circulation and homeostasis during hibernation are not well understood. The animal steadies body temperature at around 2°C to 5°C: in mammals the body temperature remains about 1°C above environmental temperature. Usally, when body temperature falls to this level, metabolic rate is increased or the animal awakes, but during hibernation this does not happen. Metabolic rate at 5°C is usually 2-5% of the rate at normal body temperature. For example, the active heart rate of the genus Myotis of bats is between 500 and 700 beats per minute. During hibernation the rate goes down to 20 beats per minute at 5°C, and 8 beats at -7°C. Two consistent and characteristic changes are found in blood during hibernation: an increased production of herapin, which may be contributing to a reduction in the risk of blood clotting during very slow circulation, and an increase in serum magnesium, for which there is no explanation as yet.

Many different types of respiratory patterns have been observed during the state of hibernation. We will mention only one example here: The hedgehog, at a body temperature of 5°C, does not breathe at all for an amazing 56 minutes.

In controlled observations, it has been found that animals which hibernate show improved retention of learned behaviour compared to non-hibernating animals. Again, it is not at all clear why this should be so.

Hibernation is not a prolonged period of constant torpor. There are periodic arousals during winter caused by the accumulation of metabolic end products or having a full bladder. The awakening process is often assisted by shivering, especially when the body temperature is very low. Awakening is a costly process because it takes as much energy to wake up as it does to stay in hibernation for ten days. The ground squirrel, Spermophilus citellus gains around 150-200 g of fat before hibernation. That is more than enough for the energy being used up during sleep; the excess is needed for the wakening up intervals which occur fortnightly.

A number of hypotheses have sought to explain how hibernation is triggered-changes in weather and climate, temperature, humidity and change of diet are among the suggestions. Apart from these causes, a protein was isolated from the blood of a hibernator bear in the USA in the 1980s which, when injected into rats appeared to induce sleeping behaviour in summer. Today it remains uncertain if this protein is the only stimulator of hibernation. If it is, we still need to know what other conditions are related to the protein level and its effect and how the level of protein is maintained at the right level during the animal’s life cycle.

What is already securely known about hibernation establishes it as a truly amazing physiological phenomenon. It tells us that the body temperature of some hibernators will passively adjust ambient tempeature from between 2°C to 32°C without causing awakening. The inevitable question is what advantage such behaviour affords the hibernating animals. Some small animals, because of their high metabolic rates are faced with an acute need for a continuously available supply of food and water. Controlled investigations show that dormant animals at cool temperatures lose much less weight than the non-dormant ones. It has also been shown that small animals can survive for at least a hundred days on the energy derived from ten grams of fat. Hibernation is, in other words, a survival technique, an adaptation to the conditions of poor or non-existent food supply during the winter months.

That is, however, something of a mechanical explanation which, even as a mechanical explanation, is far from satisfactory. The secondary question immediately arises of why this particular adaptation and not another-why not migration, for example, to areas where winter does not affect food supply so drastically? There are many birds and other animals which take this option.

A more satisfying explanation must surely consider what adaptability itself is, how it relates to the variety of life-forms, to the individuation of species and kinds, and to the overwhelming intution (which must touch any truly objective observer) that, at levels of subtlety and intricacy which defy comprehension, the survival and provision of each and every living form is minutely arranged and co-ordinated to create a whole that is thoroughly interconnected. The value of that whole is manifested in many different aspects-beauty, variety, efficiency, the rich warmth of life. Is it not impossible to resist the impression of a wonderful generosity within and behind the world of living forms?