Fez, 5:00 am

Wednesday, April 2nd

AWOKEN BY A DIFFERENT CALL

At 4:15 I was awoken by the morning call to prayer, which rose up from the medina and, through our open windows, kissed me on the cheek. The call is sent out five times a day from the minarets of each mosque by a man called a muezzin with a microphone (try saying that a few times!). I figure there are roughly two dozen mosques in the medina. And, as I have previously mentioned, the call is usually brief and often mundane. What got me out of bed this morning, however, was different.

The Palais Jamais is on a hill at the edge of the medina, its courtyard looking down on the maze of ancient buildings. The first muezzin I heard called out more artfully than I had heard before, like a cross between a chant and a crafted wail. And it lasted for well over a half hour, projected at full volume from the largest mosque in the medina. Imagine such a cry rising from every section of the medina, each with its own tone and individual rhythm, and not in unison. The uncoordinated effort is somewhat akin to a round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat (and as surreal as its last line- "Life is but a dream"); or a fire-station's alarm, rising and falling, again and again; or a radio tuned to many stations simultaneously; or a haunted seaside cave with the souls of dead pirates crying out.

A few distinct calls from the mosques closest to the hotel could be picked out of the blend, their various patterns weaving in and out of each other, engaged in an aural dance, passing back and forth around one another. The rest of the calls formed into a low moan rising up from the earth like a blanket afloat, acting as a chorus; they could be felt as well as heard, physically enveloping me in the pre-dawn air.

I listened standing on my balcony, in a hastily draped bathrobe, under the still visible stars which lit the medina as in the evening while the minarets glowed from their own sources. As the closest calls fell towards silence, others further to the west would become clear to the ear. It was almost like a wave of sound that first crashed hard and then rolled, ever so slowly, into the distance.

After a half hour only the most distant calls could be heard, coming from the west, and in their absence cries emerged from every point in the medina, like tortured souls. At first, they sounded like the distinct moans of the previous collective cry of the pirate dead, but this urban soul soon realized it was calls not to pray but to welcome the sun, by hundreds of roosters, raised in the courtyards of the medina.

Imagine the life of one raised in the medina, woken this way each morning.