Besides Georgia O’Keeffe? I bet nobody comes to mind. However, the architect who built the Mosque up on the mesa near Plaza Blanca, at Dar-al-Islam, was actually very well known beyond the borders of his country, Egypt. His name was Hassan Fathy, famous for incorporating sustainable architecture and traditional concepts and materials into his designs. He was born in Alexandria/Egypt in 1900 and graduated in 1926 from what is now Cairo University, with a focus on architecture and engineering. He soon gained a reputation for creating sustainable and affordable buildings. His designs were concerned with the problems of the poor and tried to improve their standard of living. He became known as the Architect for the Poor and actually published a book by that name. Besides working in Egypt, he also completed major projects in Greece, Iraq, and Pakistan. In 1976 he participated in the U.N.Habitat conference in Vancouver, Canada. He held several international positions and was given a number of prestigious awards. For example, in 1980 he received the Right Livelihood Award, which honors courageous change-makers. When he died in 1989 he left behind a legacy of about 160 building projects which ranged from New Gourna, a housing project near Luxor which used traditional techniques such as adobe bricks and offered shelter for 3,200 displaced families, to elegant private residences in different cities in Egypt, to the Dar-al-Islam Mosque and Educational Center right here in Abiquiú. Construction began in 1980. On one of the most blusterous days of this unusually wintery March, I met with Fatima van Hattum, a soon-to-be PhD graduate and program director at New Mexico’s statewide women’s foundation, who had actually gone to school at Dar-al-Islam and currently serves on the board. She kindly took some time off her busy schedule to show me all around the premises. We entered the compound from the back, and while I admired the beautiful lattice windows and carved wooden doors of the classroom we were in, Fatima told me a bit about the history of Dar-al-Islam. An American couple, and other community members, many of whom had converted to Islam, conceived the idea of founding a Muslim community, a religious and educational center where people from all over the world could live and study and worship together. Princess Moudi, a daughter of the late King Khalid of Saudi Arabia, provided some of the original funding. The original founders bought a 5,000-acre area in Abiquiú because they were attracted to the cultural diversity of the land: Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos all live next to each other. It was a very ambitious project. They had meetings, studied Islam, read books, and then they started this building. It is all made with adobe, although some of it was finished later, after the school closed. When I admired the doors, I remembered that Fatima’s father, Benyamin van Hattum, is a master woodworker, and I asked whether he made them? “Yes, my father made all the doors”, she replied. “He is a master carpenter, and when they were looking for a carpenter in the community, they asked him, and he did all the woodwork. Some doors have specific verses, often about knowledge, carved into them.” When Hassan Fathy came to Abiquiú to build the mosque and the other parts of the complex, he brought two master masons from Upper Egypt who showed the local builders how to construct the domes and vaults with adobe bricks. Although adobe is also used in New Mexico, the pueblo people use different techniques, Fatima tells me. We’re entering a dorm now. I admire the style of the window lattices and doors: they’re Nubian, from Upper Egypt, Fatima explains. The window style using triangles is Northern African. Adobe is an Arabic word! It means clay brick. I certainly didn’t know that. Fatima continues: “At its peak time, 30 to 40 families lived here, when the school was running. It went up to the 6th grade. That’s where my older siblings and I went to school. I was in Kindergarden. Some families lived right here on the mesa.” “In the early 90s they lost the funding from Saudi Arabia and the school closed. Dar-al-Islam became more of a retreat center, and its most consistent program has been a Teachers’ Institute. Teachers from all over the country come to learn how to teach about Islam. And in the summer it’s rented out for retreats and camps to folks from all over the country.” “The school employed a lot of people. Dar-al-Islam also owned the Abiquiú Inn, and all the land around it. There was a mechanic, a laundromat; many different businesses employed many people. When the school closed, a lot of people moved away. At its best time, it was a very diverse and lively community,” We next enter a recent addition, built in the last five years maybe. It’s a retreat space, rented out to groups and workshops, to larger groups from different programs, all related to Islam. The governance of the organization has changed over time after the school closed, it was managed more from afar. But this is changing again: there is a new board since last year, and Fatima and other locals who grew up in Abiquiú are members. The consensus is that it’s a space for Muslims and Non-Muslims, a space for contemplation, prayer, and reflection for community and friends. Fatima takes me to the library: “They put a lot of effort into the collection. There are Arabic books, English books, all about Islam. Also books about the different regions of North Africa and the Middle East. There are sections for Fine Arts, Education, Language and Literature – sections related to a broad range of subjects. Ideally, in the future, everyone in the community could use the library”. We enter two other courtyards. “During recess, this is where we kids would play. Some of the classrooms opened onto these courtyards”. The big building had classrooms for all the different grades. It leads to the new part, and then to the mosque. “The mosque was the first building that was built, everything else was subsequently built. It is ALL adobe – the entire compound. This is an incredible feat. The architect gave lectures and workshops. People came from all over to learn”. Fatima explains the building process some more: “It’s similar to New Mexico adobe, the way the bricks are made is similar, but the domes, squinches, and the vaults are different.” We are in an adobe dome, and Fatima tells me to stand in one corner and put my face in that corner. She then stood in the opposite corner and whispered something – it came across loud and clear, out of MY corner, loud enough so that I could hear it! These interesting acoustics are also in the Mosque. (To see lots of photographs from the construction of the adobe buildings, click here). We take our shoes off so we can enter the Mosque. The beauty of the space combines New Mexican and Middle Eastern art. The latillas and vigas are so New Mexican, and the windows are North African. We enter the room where people wash before going to pray. And now we see the front door – we had come in through the back door, the school. During the summer, people pray here every week. We look at the walls: they’re incredibly thick, four to five feet. Fatima had just defended her PhD dissertation, so now she has more time to dedicate herself to a project about the local history – documenting the oral history of people here, with stories of people who have lived here. She feels that the lessons of the past are so important, that we need to preserve and learn from its wisdom.
Once outside, we reach the playground. On a bright day, one can see the Pueblo de Abiquiú, the valley, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, but today everything is grey. Dark grey, light grey, almost white – it swallowed up everything that is more than 100 yards away. But the interesting journey that Fatima took me on, into the past, into different cultures and continents, made me forget the bleak weather. I enjoyed her knowledge and commitment.
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I don’t often read the Sun newspaper, but I picked up a copy while grabbing some sinful and embarrassing snacks from the dollar store the other day. I do sometimes follow the articles about local government and events (for example the ongoing NCSWA trash debacle). And, this paper has the most outlandish and plentiful police reports I have ever seen. Anyway, deep in the classified section, I saw a small ad announcing an “experimental pop up eatery near Espanola.” It only had a phone number and was pretty vague and cryptic. I love a good mystery and was intrigued, though also on guard to it being a scam. I called the number and was answered by an even more cryptic outgoing message, asking me to leave my contact so, warily, I left my number. I was called back on the same day by a pleasant and young sounding man who asked me some questions, mostly pertaining to my interest and experience with food and unusual places that I’ve dined at. He then invited me and one guest to the Espanola Airport on Saturday at 5pm (wait, Espanola has an airport?). He gave me a code word and told me to recite it to the staff that would meet us and, presumably, other people who saw the ad and were deemed worthy of this clandestine invite. Hoping we had nothing to lose by showing up, we drove to the airport the next Saturday with excitement and trepidation. There was a huge white circus-like tent, the biggest I’d ever seen, out in an open field near the runway. It looked brand new and we couldn't see what was inside from the parking area, as it was completely walled to the ground with only a small opening visible from our distance. Weirdly, there were a few horses and, I think, a llama, kind of blocking the entrance. I’m thinking, ok, a catered feast at the airport with maybe a cowboy theme? Strange, not super exciting, but we were game. We were met by a large shuttle, asked for the code word by the driver, then taken to the tent. I counted 30 people, so I assumed at least 15 had responded to the ad. We were told to walk into the small doorway, single file. It was very dark inside. Once through a short, near blackout, tunnel-like hallway, we entered a larger space. There was a dim glowing blue light and it was barely light enough to see my wife’s or anyone else’s face. Once my eyes adjusted somewhat, I saw a surprisingly small oval room, probably about 40 feet long and 25 feet wide. There were 15 very nicely set and plated tables, each with only two chairs and all on the outermost edges of the room against the wall. In the middle, on large round tables, were colorful, pyramid shaped stacks of food, maybe fruit and cakes and an array of silver pans with sterno flames? Too many to name and too dim to really understand what I was looking at. But, it was all very inviting and comfortable and strange. We were each guided to a table with our respective partners and asked if we preferred red or white. This could only mean wine, so we opted for red. It turned out to be a 2013 Malbec from St. Helena, one of my favorite towns in the wine region of California, and a very good year! When the wine arrived we were asked to hand over our phones and told that we would be given them back at the end of the evening. Ok then… Pleasant, taciturn and efficient waiters brought several small plates to our table filled with very eclectic and very delicious tapas. There were succulent bbq ribs, bacon wrapped dates and small spicy deep fried jalapeños filled with a rich, creamy cheese and some sort of nut, pecans, I think. We were eating up all this mystery, wondering what the catch was and how much was this going to cost when the room started to vibrate and hum, but quietly and smoothly. Then it felt like we were thrust up, crazy fast, but again very smoothly, and the room was filled with blue, sunny light. Each table had a curved window twice as large as the table and floor to ceiling in height. It was brain twisting to try to make sense of what we were seeing. It looked like the sky, the sky at 30,000 feet, like high up in a jet, but we weren’t moving, we were, uh, hovering. What is happening here!!? We all looked at each other in disbelief. The floor started to pulsate with warm, inviting light, and then gradually louder music filled the room with a rhythmic beat. The calm waiters kept bringing out food, now on bigger plates filled with sophisticated concoctions seemingly from all parts of the world. There was Baingan Bharta, one of my favorite eggplant dishes from India and a Chicken Cacciatore, rivaling any I’ve tried in central Italy. All this amazing food and the never ending flights of wine and music and now, dancing, took me to another place. A dreamlike place where we all happily embraced the intoxication with relaxed joy. Were we drugged? During a hypnotic spin on the dance floor, my wife looked at me with the same awe and wonder we shared way back when we were falling in love for the first time. It was a beautiful moment and I can still feel like it just only happened a moment ago. Then the music softened and the floor lights started to fade, and we all seemed to come back to reality and I noticed that the windows were now dark. The waiters had cleared all of the tables, our wine glasses had disappeared and that same dim, blue light was back. Abruptly, the small door opened in the “tent” and we were all gently herded towards it, handed back our phones in the now dark, open night and put back on the shuttle.
The entire evening is blurry and distant now, like maybe the whole thing was a dream. But the memories of it my wife and I share to the tee. I’ve driven back out to that exact location where the tent was. There is no sign of it ever being there and it seems impossible that it ever could be. But I’m thankful I was able to snatch these few photos before they took our phones away. It was a truly mind blowing dining experience I doubt I’ll ever top. And, we never did get a bill… |
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