call to prayer

Five times a day, like a wailing siren, the call to prayer rings through the city. The chorus of disembodied voices proclaiming God's greatness is, at first, a bit alarming. But soon the call becomes a familiar punctuation to the day, and, moreover, a reminder to pause and reflect. The call to prayer highlights the surrounding beauty by demanding one's presence and attention. And often it underscores irony, like when the call caught us sitting in a dingy attic cafe in Casablanca filled with young hashish smoking Moroccans.  

Below,  a photo of our first call to prayer, overlooking Chefchaouen at sunset. 

The blue city

Laundry day at the river, Chef Chaouen

Charles getting a proper shave in Fez

The Moroccan drinking fountain: men dressed in these red outfits dispense cool water from the sheepskin canteens on their backs

Market in the medina (old city) in Meknes

Mint, a staple of the Moroccan diet

Your friendly neighborhood cow foot vendor

This was a very important stop on our journey: the Danan synagogue in Fes. I felt honored to be in the synagogue that bears my family name in a city where the Danans lived for hundreds of years. Visiting heritage sites has been a focal point of this trip, and I don't want to brush over the subject too lightly. Ill delve deeper in my next post.

Harira: traditidatonal Moroccan soup made with tomatoes, chickpeas, noodles, and cilantro.

Street food in Rabat: a sandwich with fried egg, eggplant, and peppers. Only 75 cents! 

Below: the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca,  the third largest mosque in the world. It carries the same majestic air as the Taj Mahal.

Early one morning,  while the air was still dark and cool, a familiar sound shook my sleep and sent my dreams whirling. The call was louder that morning, almost a war cry signaling the beginning of Ramadan. Half asleep, I was swept up in a gust of hot Saharan wind, a flurry of sand battered my face and I was separated from my dream companions. I called out, but there was no one around to answer.
The magical part is, just one week after I awoke from that dream, I was actually there - caught in a dust storm in the dunes of the Sahara desert riding in a camel caravan.
"Did you hear that?" asked Charles over the howl of the wind. Very distant, like an echo of an echo, I could hear the call to prayer. After that, the winds settled and the sun dipped beyond the edge of the desert. The world was quiet, just the shadow of a camel under a crescent moon, the sound of soft footsteps and sand.