Friday Sermon
The clarity of the call to prayer on a Friday makes its week-day counterparts sound like amateurs. I don’t know if it is actually louder, or if it is just that there is less traffic to mute it.
Whilst passing a mosque somewhere in Hama, a speaker was broadcasting not the usual Allahu akbar of the call to prayer, but the sermon that was taking place inside.
His reading occasionally gave way to the singing of some passages; I don’t know if he was preaching directly from them Qur’an, or whether the imam was reading his own words.
Ghetto blaster
The local tunes rattling the speakers of a little hut down on the Tartous coast.
Prayer & Thunder
A brief glimpse of sunshine brought us to Aleppo’s citadel. As we emerged from the throne room, a storm rolled in. Taking shelter under the ruins of an arch, the afternoon call to prayer came from the muezzin, echoing off the ancient walls of the citadel as the rain hammered down.
Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar
Ashadu an la llah ila Allah
Ashhadu an Mohammed rasul Allah
Haya ala sa-sala
Haya ala af-fala
Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar
La llah ila Allah
The call was soon followed by a deep, roaring thunder that accompanied the storm.
Aleppo souq
Getting lost in the city is the way to go; there you find the little souks which provides everything from scrap metal to live chickens to the people living amongst it. Where you share the alley-ways with children delivering shai, motorbikes weaving through women dressed in chador, mini-vans squeezing in-between the stone walls, and the occasional man on a donkey ambling through it all.
They are also the place to eat, paying 0.25€ for a falafel, and washing it down with a fresh local brew.
As the sunlight fades, the streets fill with the sweet smell of narghile tobacco.
