Morning Transitions

The harbinger of morning is the adhan, or the Islamic call to prayer. When the sky is breaking from a dark blue to sapphire hue, the adhan announces the new day. My apartment is Baaka, in southern Jerusalem, and the topography of this ancient city is a series of hills. The landscape is not broken by towering building or groves or trees, so one’s view and one’s voice carries like an errant plastic bad caught in a mild zephyr. Called out from a mosque, the adhan summons Muslims for the first set of five mandotary prayers or fard salah. The West Bank or the arab community of one of the Palestinian Territories is an earshot from my neighborhood, so I experience the splendor of this religious summoning. It begins with a single voice – slightly cracked and diffuse. This voice, sung with texture and slightly stylized vibrato, catches my ear. It is alone and singular. Then, other mosques join into the adhan and the one voice becomes a chorus – not in perfect timbre, but enough convergence to create a wall of sound. As I am transitioning from an unconscious to a conscious state, so do the sound outside my window - from the profane to the mundane. In the courtyard below, stray cats whine with plaintive pathos and birds sing with petulant indignation. These are the most vehemently angry animals I have ever heard - not unlike the taxi driver whom exploded in a diatribe after I requested a course correction (Israelis are not known for thier customer service but seems to have a developed appreciation for foreign curses). Thus, this marks the new day and it is a delightful reminder that I am in Israel – a land of holiness and rudeness.

I have attached snaps of my flat and my neighborhood.