Two weeks ago, John and I were sitting under an azure sky on the terrace of our riad, a traditional Moroccan inn, in the old city of Marrakech. The sun had just set, leaving an amber glow along the horizon. The Atlas Mountains rose out of the desert in the distance. The graceful palms of Marrakech swayed before a backdrop of snow-topped peaks. Storks—revered by the people here—soared overheard. It was good to be lounging away from the bustle and dust of the narrow alleyways below. It was wonderful to be in Morocco in the spring, after the High Atlas has thawed and before the Sahara becomes unbearable.
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| Ait Benhaddou A fortified city on the former caravan route between Marrakech and the Sahara |
We were relaxing in the warmth, forgetting the 7-degree temperature we’d left behind in Minnesota, when a man’s sonorous voice rose up over the old city: over the tiny rug shops, the bakeries, the fruit stalls, the cafes, the square with its herb sellers and monkey trainers. From one of the city’s many mosques, the Muslim Call to Prayer had begun.
Almost immediately, from a second mosque another Call joined the first. Then there was a third, a fourth, a half dozen. For a few moments, we seemed to be sitting in the middle of an echoing bell of sound, as these voices called from all around us to pray, to pray, to pray. To take a moment out of the day and pray.
The Call to Prayer, or adhan, is central to Islam. It is whispered into the ear of newborns—the first words a baby hears—and it echos over every Islamic city five times a day, beginning with the earliest glimpse of light in the morning and ending half way between sunset and midnight.
The first time I heard the Call to Prayer in person, I was 25 and staying in Istanbul. I was on the threshold of a great adventure: a two-year trip around the world with nothing but a couple pairs of jeans and a book or two. I was, in many ways, also on the threshold of my life. I was still discovering who I was. My round-the-world trip was part of that discovery, a kind of unfolding of my self.
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| The Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul (from Wikipedia Commons) |
Istanbul was the first Muslim city I had ever been in, and I was falling in love with the Islamic world: With the stunning tiles and the graceful calligraphy, the grandeur of the mosques, the hanging lamps, the souqs. With honey pastries and jam made of roses. With wrinkled old men who poured perfumed water over your hands before you boarded a rickety bus. With the hypnotic music and poetry and gardens.
But the Call was something else. It was a reminder to step out of that life, to forget the beauty and busy-ness of the day. To bow down and turn our thoughts to Something Else. There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His prophet. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. God is great. God is great.
I’m not Muslim, and I don’t believe in God, not in the way most Muslims (and most Christians and practicing Jews) do, but I was moved by the Call nonetheless. I was drawn to the idea of taking time out of the business of the day—out of sleep and study, shopping and work—to pause and remember who you are. To Muslims, the muezzin—the caller—is issuing an invitation to bow down to God and pray. But there are many ways to bow, aren’t there? And many different ways to pray? For me, the Call meant a moment to think about who I was, who I was becoming, what I was meant to do in the world. To reflect on the life I was embarking on: a lifetime of study, travel, teaching, and writing. A lifetime of being a writer.
More than thirty years passed between the time I first heard the Call to Prayer as a young woman in Istanbul and the day John and I listened to it in Marrakech, but I still go back to the way I felt all those years ago. I remember the way the Call made me stop, to center myself for a moment. How I took in a breath at the invitation to bow down and pray. How, in those moments of pausing to reflect, I learned two fundamental things about my life: That writing was my prayer, that travel was my bowing down.