Don't stand by the mosque at noon!

"It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a pour weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die." Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

I read this yesterday right as the call to prayer was sounding out. I was told upon arrival that I would quickly grow accustomed to hearing it, and would not even notice it after a few days. It's been two weeks and I still notice it every time. A friend recently asked if it was unnerving, and I told her not so much. I thought about her today, and wanted to amend my response: it's only unnerving when you're standing directly in front of a mosque when the call rings, for it rings LOUD and boisterously.

I suppose parts of my Dickens quote does not fit the call to prayer. My imagination sees the little Muslim man climbing the spiral stairs of the minaret up to the top and singing into the microphone, and I find myself in days of old. The devout promise that it is a live man singing each time, and not a tape recording of someone's voice, so it actually has maintained the "life and resonance of a human voice." But the rest of what Dickens said...this is how the call to prayer makes me feel. Have no fear, though, I do not wish to lie down and die.

I just wish with each call to prayer that those who hear it would respond "in spirit and truth" that God truly is great, and that prayer is an incredible step towards finding him. Instead, the swarms of people on the street keep rolling with the tides and don't seem to pay attention to the call, as I was told would happen to me. I had imagined before arrival that the call would be like the lowering of the flag on military bases around the world...everyone stops what they are doing during that moment, and resumes when the trumpet is finished. Once again, my imagination is more creative than reality.

This famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, longs for the hopeless and lost creatures to "taste and see that the Lord is good." The call to prayer has served me as a reminder to pray that this will be so.