In my former life in the US, I was a definitive night owl. I’d tuck Dana in at 11pm and play on my computer, read, chit chat, or whatever I felt like doing till about 2am. On holidays, I could even go to bed around 4am. The night was always young, and after 11pm, always mine. I loved it.
I have somehow decided to live in a land of morning people. The first daily call to prayer is always at 430am. During Ramadan, a supplementary, pre-Sahur bonus can be had at 2am. By 6:30am, the full sun is up and the day is in full swing for many.
In the last post, I mentioned that the Sahur Garage Band tended to set off a chain reaction that kept me from going back to sleep till about 6am. The full chain is described below.
The Night Life
- The Sahur Garage Band starts somewhere between 2am and 215am. They keep going throughout the neighborhood till about 3:30am. They manage to rouse not only the people, but the roosters.
- The roosters start to crow hours earlier than they would normally, between the hours of 3am and 4am. There are always two. The first rooster is vibrant, cocksure, announcing to the world, “I’m here!” He’s that perky co-worker who wants to talk to everybody about everything before anyone has had coffee yet. The second rooster is the annoyed co-worker who just wants his coffee first. His response crow is surly, tired, the kind that says, “Yeah, yeah, go away and bother another neighborhood.” They go at it for up to 30 minutes at a time.
- Some mosques start a chant between 4am-415am to remind people of the call to prayer (I assume this is this case, anyway). We seemingly have mosques every few blocks, and each mosque has a loudspeaker for announcements and calls to prayer. By 430 am, every mosque in the neighborhood is broadcasting over their loudspeaker system(s).
- Every mosque starts with the same call to prayer, but might be followed by individual recitations from the Qur’an. In any event, none of the mosques are synchronized in neither key nor timing. I liken the end result to a group of people attempting to sing Happy Birthday on Zoom, if Happy Birthday sounded like a Gregorian chant. That keeps up till about 5am.
- Sunrise starts somewhere between 5-515am. This is the prime time to go back to bed. Except now the roosters are doing their working dialogue again in earnest because it is daylight. In fact, as I started writing this post at 530am, at least two children were running outside the street doing something involving lots of laughter. Motorbikes are running and the daily business has started. And now I might as well get up because it’s hard to sleep with so much sunlight.
- Some nights I have slept through much of all this. Optimistically, I might surmise that I am becoming accustomed to all of it. I’m more prone to believe that I undergo cycles of exhaustion wherein my brain decides that it’s had quite enough, thank you, and it will stay shut down for the night. Like today.
Coda
After two weeks, I’ve found myself annoyed only at the two roosters. I’d been entertaining dark fantasies about ending their lives and eating them. I’ve heard it’s not easy to feather a chicken, but I’m absolutely game to try. I can definitely butcher one. I asked my host whether she knew where the roosters lived, and if it was possible to buy the two roosters off the neighbor so I could do precisely these things. She smiled wryly and said, sure, she could point them out.
We walked about four blocks uphill, and my host waved me towards the building on the left. My growing anticipatory excitement turned to dismay. My revenge fantasies died unfulfilled, replaced with the sobering truth that the Rooster Dialogues were an uphill battle I am destined to lose. My host had waved me towards a 3-story apartment complex turned chicken coop.
Nowadays, I resign myself to sleep between 10pm and midnight and awaken to the Rooster Dialogues. I imagine dialogue vignettes in my mind as they call and respond to each other. I eat chicken dishes and pretend they are roosters. I’m aware that I’m reinforcing an unending positive feedback loop wherein I feed the very industry that has ruined my former way of life, but I don’t care. It is enough to savor my moment of tasty, petty revenge.