song

I had a lousy night. Went to bed early because I was so exhausted, but got woken up an hour later because some dumbo decided to call me at the indecent hour of 12.30am (Alright, fine I'm the dork here but who cares). Ended up not being able to sleep until 4.45am, so I did some arabic, cooked some asparagus and gave Pookie some company. At around 4.30am, I finally started feeling tired so I turned off the lights and prepared my brain for sleep...But then the adhan for the morning prayer started, and so I stayed up until the 10 minute long cacophony of 15 different mosques within the vicinity finished calling the faithful to prayers.

Now, I love the call to prayer. Sung well, I think it can be incredibly moving and atmospheric. It's an art.

Unfortunately, my experience of muezzins in Egypt has been sour — most of them sound like they have frogs in their throats. At my downtown apartment, the mosque speakers were right next to my window — imagine the nightmare of being woken up by a really bad muezzin at 5am every morning, croaking out on extra loud speakers, pausing in between lines to violently cough out whatever bullshit has accumulated in his throat due to living in downtown Cairo.

So as usual, last night (or rather this morning), I prepared myself for the usual onslaught of ear ache. All of a sudden though, this beautiful voice rang out amidst the relative din — I'd never heard this guy before, but he was good. He sung the adhan in several different octaves, he stretched every note lovingly, he SANG like I've never heard a muezzin in Egypt sing before. I couldn't tell how far away his mosque was from my building, but the quality of his performance actually set his voice apart from the others.

I literally lay there in the dark, still as a mouse, with my eyes wide open for five minutes, stretching my ears as much as I could to listen to this guy. It was over before I knew it. Regretfully, I closed my eyes and fell asleep in peace.