On an encounter that didn’t seem to fit
I had taken a seat somewhere in the hall of the Galata Mevlevihanesi in Istanbul.
The ceremony had not yet begun. People were finding their places, speaking in low voices.
I hadn’t traveled with the group that organized the tour. I had simply flown to Istanbul and booked a hotel in Sultanahmet. From there, I joined them.
Maybe that’s where the feeling started.
Being part of it — but not quite.
The journey lay behind them — a route through places connected to the Sufism of Jalal ad-Din Rumi. For most, this was the conclusion.
Not for me.
I would be staying on. Another week, in the presence of the teacher.
We had also been instructed, as aspiring dervishes, not to let ourselves go too much. Inner focus, outer restraint.
As the hall filled, a subtle tension began to surface.
Certain seats had been reserved for the Celebi family, but they had already been taken by others. Not everyone felt inclined to move.
There was quiet whispering, some pointing, gentle insistence.
But the seats remained occupied.
It was a small incident, easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. And yet something in the room shifted — a tension between what was intended and what was actually happening.
As if something traditional was being revived, but no longer fully supported by the realities of the present.
Then I saw him.
A man, a few rows ahead. Something about him caught my attention. Nothing dramatic — just familiar.
I couldn’t place him.
My gaze lingered.
What was it?
Then I saw it.
His hair. High, wavy — almost from another era. Like old photographs of my grandfather in the 1920s.
And suddenly I knew.
Not my grandfather.
But Cosmo Kramer.
The thought came so unexpectedly that I had to stop myself from laughing. What was Kramer doing here, in a tekke in Istanbul?
It wasn’t entirely surprising.
At the time, we were watching an episode of Seinfeld almost every evening after work. That world was still very much alive in me.
And here I was.
We had been instructed not to get carried away.
But this was genuinely funny.
I tried to keep a straight face, but inside, two worlds were colliding.
I can’t quite place the timing anymore, but at some point I decided to speak to him.
“Are you Kramer?”
As soon as I said it, I noticed something strange.
I expected him to respond as Kramer.
As if I couldn’t separate him from the role.
He noticed.
He played along for a moment — lightly, almost teasingly — but not fully. Then he said, calmly, that it was just a role. That he had played many others, including work by William Shakespeare.
As if he were inviting me to see him differently.
We kept talking.
I asked what inspired him in his portrayal of Kramer.
He said he had a particular eye for what’s off. For behavior that doesn’t quite fit. For small details most people overlook.
And… shoes.
He would store those things away, he said, and draw on them later.
At some point, a few of us found ourselves sitting in a circle around him.
It felt almost natural.
And yet it wasn’t.
We were sitting around Kramer as if he were the sheikh.
That encounter felt out of place.
Not because anything was wrong, but because it didn’t seem to belong in the context in which it was happening. As if two realities had crossed paths without fully meeting.
At another moment, the ceremony began. The dervishes turned, and the cameras turned with them. The space grew quieter, deeper.
And somehow, everything came together.
The places that didn’t align.
The roles that shifted.
The images that imposed themselves.
Afterwards, I didn’t speak with him again.
There was no need.
After returning home, I told this rather amusing story several times in a Sufi class — perhaps because I sensed there was more to it than just humor.
While writing this, I came across an interview in The Guardian in which he said something that stayed with me.
He described himself as someone who sees the world from the perspective of the clown — someone attuned to what’s off, what unsettles, what doesn’t quite fit.
Maybe that was exactly what I saw.
And maybe also what I failed to see.
Perhaps being out of place is not a mistake.
But an opening.