My son’s friend Habeeb has begun writing poetry. A true global nomad, growing up between worlds, his musical bent shows up as he writes about the sounds of his home in Amman.
True Essence of Longing
They’ve been close to me my entire life.
Every single day
I spend a little bit of time gorging on those close to heart noises.
Be it those agitatingly high-pitched children screaming in the streets,
Or the unnerving interpretations of Beethoven’s “Albumblatt fur Elise”
Played by the local gas trucks.
Even the screeching of the call to prayer at four in the morning
Conjures up the essence of home.
Never would I want them to end.
I miss them so dearly in the sojourns to lands that my ancestors called home.
Those lands where you are ever so pleasantly serenaded
By the dreary silence of the whitewashed suburbs.
A silence only to be broken by the quarreling of an angry couple,
A spoiled fat dog barking, or perhaps the blaring of a distorted radio.
I’m sure that I would weep for hours if one day those favorite sounds ceased.
I’d be packing up my bags to search for the music of home.
Wow, how beautiful! And something about the call to prayer at 4 AM: as many times as that has awakened me when I have no desire to be up at that time… the sound is lovely at that hour.
Emi, that could be your son some day
My appreciation for the call to prayer is commensurate with proximity to the mosque: it is annoyingly jarring within ear-splitting nearness, a lovely reminder to give the day to Allah when a little farther away. I wake to it every day, and pray along as much as my doctrine is similar. For God is great, merciful and compassionate 
You’re right about the call to prayer – we live quite far out so it gently echoes down the hills for the 4 AM. If we were living closer, I might not like it so much!