Mullahs in their Minarets

When I was a young boy growing up on the farm in Ontario...... the Michigan Central Railway ran along the base of the highland where 20 thousand years ago a glacier bulldozed a big deposit of dirt before it went back home to the North Pole. Our farm sits on the top of the mound and the railway ran below.
From Hamilton all the way to Detroit. Many trains ran along that track for  years a very few carrying passengers mostly freight trains hauling steel from the Stelco plants in Hamilton to the Motor City ..and chugging back with the finished product....brand new cars for us to buy.
The  trains were so regular that no one on our  road needed to wear  a watch. For instance at 11:20 everyday a passengeer train would roll through ...on it's way south....my dad would say "there's 50" ....the number of the train...... you could even hear the whistle in our back field as it blew it's warning for the crossing on 59 highway ....you knew you had another forty minutes of tractor work before you could head up for lunch.
There was another train at 4:30 in the afternoon....time to milk the cows...one at 10 in the evening...time to check the herd for the night and one at 4 in the morning....another hour to sleep before the day began.
It's kind of like that here in Cairo.
Now in place of trains......it's the Mullahs in their Minarets.  There is a mosque half a block  away from the apartment...you can see it easily from the window on the fourth floor....so the noise travels unchecked by trees or other buildings strait to us. The first time I heard it was the day after I arrived ...I was in the bathroom and I thought Kim was listening to something very loudly on the internet...when I came out she wasn't at the desk...I quickly figured out what was going on and she said "get used to it.... it happens several times a day". It's funny how quickly you do get used to things....in the early days I would look out the window when the call came and watch hundreds of men converge on  the church from all directions...I have no idea where they all come from....sometimes there are so many there's an overflow and they end up dragging their prayers mats to the dusty little park beside the mosque and line up there...... heads on the ground pointing to Mecca....
If a guy can't make in because he's looking after his store...then out comes the prayer mat onto the sidewalk and down he goes head on the ground...butt up in the air...like I say...this happens every day several times...once at 4:30 in the morning...oh yes EVERY morning the dulcet tones of the Mullah in his Minaret bringing you out of a nice deep sleep...another at 11:45....time for lunch...... once again at 4:30 and then again at 10 PM. There seems to be no end to the praying. Walking the streets you see many men with dark spots high in the middle of their foreheads....they're callouses from pressing their heads into the carpet in the Mosque....the larger and deeper the callous...obviously the more devout the man...and I say man ....because there are NO women taking part in this ritual...they pray I assume...but I don't know where.
On Friday....their Sunday...there is an hour long sermon from the Mullah in his Minaret....I have to admit that can be a little much...because he can really get himself worked up into a religious verbal frenzy!
In conclusion...I don't really pay attention anymore...but some of the dirges do have a bit of a tune that you can recognize when you hear them often enough...... and some have a riff that's actually quite catchy.
But I don't think we're going to hear the Mullah in his Minaret on the hit parade anytime soon....
Later...insallah....b