the balcony
My dear friend,
When I called you the other night from our balcony, I intended to describe the view to you—but in the background I could hear the clamor of voices, and silverware on dishes, and I felt badly about pulling you away from your family and keeping you on the line.
I think I told you already that we live on the tenth floor of an eleven-story building on Street 199 in Maadi. We’re the only apartment on our floor, and we have yet to see (or even hear, since the walls are thick) our neighbors. The Maadi neighborhood is known for being the leafiest in Cairo. But although the neighborhood in general attracts expats and European diplomats (as we wander the streets, we'll find ourselves passing an Irish school, a French kindergarten, a German bakery), our building is actually situated on the very edge of the district. It’s not especially quiet or green, and we don’t see all that many foreigners.
Last night, determined to enjoy the balcony despite the hundred-degree heat, C. looked up from his laptop at the sound of hooves and glanced down to watch a clip-clopping donkey pulling a cart of vegetables down the middle of the street. (The donkey didn’t seem to care about the line of cars slowly piling up behind him.) We often see kids calling down several floors to their friends, or men leaning over railings with the red tips of their cigarettes aglow, or women reclining in their wicker chairs with glasses of fruit juice or tea. When we figured out how to do laundry, I delighted in hanging it out to dry on the balcony, just as I saw neighbors across the way hanging clean shirts and sheets on theirs.
Since we’re situated between two mosques, we also hear the call to prayer several times a day, interspersed with horns honking from the freeway and the shouts of vendors hawking their wares. I wish you could hear it. At first, we thought that the calls were pre-recorded and later projected into the neighborhood; now, having listened for a few days, we think that the calls are live, or alive, performed by individuals—muezzin—whose voices shift and shimmer depending on the day, the weather, their mood, their temperament. Once or twice, C. has slid open the glass door to the balcony and poked his head in to say: “You’ve got to come out and hear this. He’s really rocking it today!”
The name muezzin comes from the Arabic word for “ear,” which is particularly interesting since it is said that many of the muezzin were blind. A man who was blind could be trusted not to peer down from the minaret (the tower attached to or adjacent to the mosque) into people’s homes and private lives. Curious about the practice, I read a few pages on the history of the muezzin—I’m enclosing some paragraphs with this note, as I’m guessing you’ll be curious, as well.
Though Cairo is sometimes called “the city of a thousand mosques,” thirty thousand is the more accurate figure. Imagine hearing thirty thousand different voices chanting thirty thousand different calls to prayer. The effect is kaleidoscopic. In 2004, the Egyptian government announced a plan to eliminate this cacophony by broadcasting a single call from a single studio in downtown Cairo that would be transmitted to mosques throughout the city. Some residents expressed their satisfaction with this push for unity and consistency; others were dismayed at the thought of what would be lost if thirty thousand songs were winnowed down to one. In 2010, government officials sent by the Ministry of Religious Endowment began appearing in mosques with small black boxes that they hooked up to the sound system. In 2012, a number of muezzin told a journalist from Egypt Independent that their small black boxes were broken (cue the wink and the nod) and that no one from the government had come to check on them since they’d been installed. While I can’t speak to the state of the current government’s plan for a unified call to prayer, I can say with certainty that the mosques that flank us on either end of the street transmit different calls in different voices, often at slightly different times—and I must admit that there is something haunting and beautiful in the dissonance.
One more thing: I’ve been in the habit, while on the balcony, of gazing toward the flicker of dark curtains and the floating gold windows across the way in the hope of seeing something of the lives within. I do this at home, of course, too. On the short winter days when Cedar and I are crunching over snow-encrusted sidewalks after dark, I delight in glimpses of silhouettes crossing a kitchen floor or gathering around a table. Isn’t this why we love literature, too? Aren’t books, too, windows into other lives? I guess I’d make an untrustworthy muezzin. I’d never be able to keep my eyes closed.
Yours—L.
Enclosed: Two pages (107-108) from Islam and Disability: Perspectives in Theology and Jurisprudence by Mohammed Ghaly (Routledge: 2010).
As for… informing people of the time to prayer, jurists stated that the muezzin should do his best to make his voice heard by as many people as possible. Different prophetic traditions indicate the rewards of raising one’s voice during the prayer call, stating, for instance, that the sins of the muezzin will be forgiven, he will be rewarded for every person who responds to the prayer call and comes to prayers, and all who hear the prayer call will testify for the muezzin on the Day of Resurrection. It was always recommended that ideally adhan [the call to prayer] was called from a high place so as to be audible to the largest possible number of people. During the lifetime of the Prophet, adhan was proclaimed from the top of the highest house near the mosque. After its height was raised for this specific purpose, adhan was proclaimed from the roof of the mosque itself. Later on, adhan was proclaimed from a high place, generally a turret of a mosque called a ‘minaret’ (in Arabic manara or mi’dhana).
Climbing the minaret, however, enabled the muezzin to see into the private space of neighbouring houses, a practice which is absolutely forbidden in Islam. To overcome this problem, jurists came up with a number of precautionary measures. For instance, [they] stipulated a minimum distance between the minaret and the houses near the mosque, otherwise the muezzin would not be allowed to climb it. This minimum distance had to be far enough for a person looking from the minaret to be unable to differentiate between male and female figures in nearby houses. Jurists also focused on specific characteristics in the muezzin himself to help him to lower his gaze and thus not look into the private space of others. Righteousness, being married and being advanced in years were the characteristics most often mentioned. Other jurists said that in addition the muezzin should promise not to spy on the neighbors or allow others to go up the minaret.
But it seems that all these measures did not solve the problem. For instance, the Shafi’i jurist Ibn Hajar al-Haytami told the story of a muezzin who, despite his well-known righteousness, watched a Christian lady from the minaret and fell so deeply in love with her that he converted to Christianity in order to marry her. On the day of the marriage, Ibn Hajar added, the former muezzin fell from the roof of his house and died, thus lost to his religion and to his beloved lady.
