Having only just recovered from jetlag and waking up unnaturally early every morning, my groggy consciousness struggled to figure out why it was waking to the theme music of Angry Birds. My eyes finally fluttered open to find the sky outside still dark and Malcolm's uncoordinately sleepy figure silhouetted against it as he stumbled towards his phone to turn off the animated alarm. As he flopped back into bed for another 9 minutes of undisturbed rest, I remembered - we were going fishing today.
The damage done, but my body still reluctant, I lay awake in bed. If the sun was coming up, it was doing so incrementally. It probably didn't help that I could see it was starting off to be an overcast morning. I savoured the moment. In a house of 10 that was next to another house under construction, both being in a neighbourhood full of dogs and stray cats, and all in a country in the beginning of its rainy season, it was a rare moment of serenity.
An uncertain amount of time passed before I was brought out of my own meditation by someone else's. The voice, low at first, came rising out of the early morning and in through the open windows. His voice was joined by a second one, so faint that it could have been there the entire time. The two climbed and fell together, both filled with devotion and dedication that felt as old as time.
Multicultural as Canada is, I had never had the chance to hear this before. This being my first time in a Muslim country, I had strained my ears for days, hoping to snatch a note of a prayer at any time of the day, and now I had it all to myself. The muezzin's amplified voice did not sound tinny as I had feared, but rather faint but full at the same time. The prayers ended a few moments later, but my sense of awe and wonderment lasted the entire morning.
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