This morning I had the oddest in-and-out of sleep experience yet while living in Dubai. I live in the area of Dubai known as "Downtown". It would be equivalent to living on the 15th floor of a mid-rise tower on the Strip in Las Vegas...or perhaps at the corner of Times Square and 42nd street in NYC. It's a far, far cry from the peace-filled surroundings of my San Diego condo, or the quiet Texas farm that I grew up on.
Every morning, around 4 am, at the nearby Mosque you can hear the sounds of the morning call to prayer...and then a bit later, the actual prayer being sung by a local Islamic man....pouring over the tops of villas and bus stops and construction sites like smoldering ash, seeping into the crevices of dreams and closed eyelids.
Most of the time, I can't hear it....but this morning I woke up to an unfamiliar voice billowing out from the speakers of the mosque and into my single paned windows, waking me.....calling me...a near begging of me.
Sheikh Zayed Road is the busiest thoroughfare in Dubai...and my room is perched above it like a nest that never quite got nestled, due to the ongoing construction of other nests surrounding mine. Frequently, I'm awakened by the sounds of banging, hammering, sawing, craning, nailing....but rarely to that of a prayer such as this one this morning....such a surreal prayer that I could only liken it to that of a drowning victim. Calling...almost as if with water already filling up their mouth...out for anyone in the near vicinity to hear. This man's prayer, was not being drowned in a sea of water...but in a sea of traffic. Cars flying to and fro...like the crashing of waves back and forth on the sea's edge, and a lone voice in the midst of it all, wanting...pleading for safety, serenity and peace.
Dubai is interestingly akin to this picture that was created in my mind. A culture of face-paced business people, speeding through life...and the traditions of the Islamic culture, trying desperately to slow it down. To have a voice above the traffic of the Dubai life. Similarly to the prayer this morning...it often goes unheard in the midst of the development and growth; the expats and tourists; the flash and opulence...the crashing of the waves of a society that wants somewhere to be new-worldly and old-world-like at the same time.
And somewhere amidst the droning sounds of the summoning voice that continued to drift in and out of the waves of traffic passing by....I fell back to sleep in a sea of drowning prayers.
