Friday

A particularly surreal part of Living in Jordan is simply the fact that it is a Muslim country. Every friday the Mosques broadcast their sermons over loudspeakers all across the city. I can't understand what the Imams are saying (An Imam is a spiritual leader of a mosque), but they preach very emphatically. They use a lot of repetition and the whole thing is very rhetorical I think. It reminds me of a southern gospel revival or something, but as the message is in arabic, it's much more intimidating. For example, I'll be sitting on the balcony and listening to the nearby mosque, and the sermon will roll and echo throughout the valley and buildings nearby. It produces an incredibly surreal effect, as though we were underwater, masking the sounds of traffic. These messages will go on for a long time, drifitng in and out of awareness, and at some points the Imam will recite Qur'an in a sort of chant. It's odd how the sound pervades the whole house to become background noise, like we were bathing in it.

Less odd but more frequent is the call to prayer, which happens five times everyday. I have not yet experienced a day where I actually notice it five times, but I usually notice it at least twice. One of the first nights I was here I woke up around four in the morning. I went to get some water and I was looking out the window. The city was coated in this burnt orange light pollution and I was looking at this little copse of trees outside my window when the call to prayer started. I'd never heard aything like it. The first prayer starts around 4:30 and last for about ten minutes or so. In a way it seems like the whole city is united under this practice, it's become so common as to become a part of life that you really only notice if you try.