It is Eid al Fitr – the end of Ramadan. To stay in the neighborhood of my last blog entry – that is physical neighborhood I wanted to share what I experienced this morning. It made me think about so many things at once.
I woke at 6:45 AM and as always (weather permitting) I opened all the windows in the house to let some fresh morning air in. On Frederick Douglass Boulevard a lone male voice was calling for prayer. Allah Akbar! The strong voice sang in a surprisingly strong and carrying voice. Normally very adverse to any kind of unduly noise I had to smile. It’s only once a year that the local mosque up the block calls to prayer on the streets; onEid al Fitr and I did not mind and was imagining the excited children with their Eid presents and parents (I imagine) relieved that the fasting was over and they could properly hydrate during the hot summer days.
Suddenly I heard a voice from a window: “Hey, stop it, stop it, stop the noise!” This I thought very curious – we are subject to HOURS of pounding car stereos (the kind that makes your chair skip with the ‘thump’, ‘thump’ of the base), young women in yelling matches and cat fights, people holding entire conversations yelling down the block and I have NEVER heard anybody lean out the window complain. Was it the early morning hour that woke one of our ‘out of work’ neighbors that prompted the complaint? Someone who had been partying all night on the block? Of course the Muezzin carried on – I’m not sure if he even heard the complaint.
I was thinking what an upside down world; where no one leans out the window to tell a nuisance noise to stop but the Muezzin who calls out once a year gets reprimanded. I’m thinking next time I’m up all night because of a car stereo, rather than calling 311 and waiting for naught until the police comes by to stop the noise I’ll just get up early in the morning and do a bit of yelling myself.
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