Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Anyone who travels to the Middle East has heard the call to prayer many times during their stay. It always begins with the beseeching cry of Allahu Akbar, which means God is greater. It is, perhaps the most succinct statement of the optimism of religion one can hear. It is less about power and more about the importance of the good life and why it should trump all else. It is one of the things that makes it easier for me to understand why Islam is now the dominant religion in the world. Religion has as its core, providing people with hope and Allahu Akbar seems to me to provide a statement of hope more than any other I can imagine. 

There are six calls to prayer per day in Islam and the exact times vary with location. Here in Egypt right now the first call or Fair call is at 5 AM and the second is at 6:22 AM for the Sunrise call. This morning we were docked in the town of Esna on the west coast of the Nile river. I noticed before going to bed that we were parked directly across from a mosque because I could see the minaret rising above the town only 100 yards from the boat. I guess that mosque has an over eager mullah because when I awoke to use the bathroom at 4:30 I had the opportunity to hear the Fair call to prayer at about 4:50 AM. there is nothing quite Middle Eastern like being awakened by hearing a mullah cry, Allahu Akbar.

When and if the prayer had ended after a few Allahu Akbar declarations that might’ve been OK. Instead the mullah went on mumbling some sort of additional prayer. That was just enough to keep me slightly awake until it ended. The next thing I knew it was 6:30 AM and I heard something quite different which sounded like perhaps the air conditioning was on. When I got up, I could see the eastern sunlight over the bank of the Nile filtering through the edges of the curtain of our shipboard suite. I decided it was morning enough to justify opening the curtains to see that we were motoring our way up the Nile and the sight of palm trees backdropped by rugged desert mountains was a spectacular site.

It may be a little bit annoying to a non-Muslim like myself to get awakened by an over, eager mullah, but I can say with certainty that it’s worth it if you get to open your window shades and open the sliding glass door of your riverboat suite and enjoy the fragrant smells of the Nile River Valley as it slowly passes by your window. And of course, you also get to realize that you are traveling on the river that is at the very heart of human civilization and that you will spend the day looking at more temples that honor this wonderful existence we have been given by God or Allah, or whoever you choose  to give credit for this magnificent life we are allowed to enjoy. Allahu Akbar.

Kim and I have taken a riverboat cruise before. We took a Viking cruise from Budapest up to Nuremberg along the Danube river. It’s billed as the Blue Danube River Cruise. When they advertise that cruise to see these lovely European castles and picturesque villages that you pass along the Danube river. What they don’t show you is that your riverboat is sailing along a river bank that leaves you nothing to look at from your suite window other than a lot of bushes. On that trip, I got to see Hungarian bushes and Austrian bushes and German bushes and maybe even a few Czech bushes, but it was not of you to write home about. I can now say with great authority that whatever promotional pictures, you see of the Nile River cruise, it will understate the grandeur of riding on a Nile river boat, and enjoying the shoreside views of the palm trees, villages, desert hills, and general southern Egyptian landscape.

Note to my readers – I’ve managed to fry the battery of my iPad thanks to the variable power grid on this riverboat. I am blaming the riverboat because Apple can do no wrong, but the end result is still the same. I have no functioning iPad on which to write. Since writing is what I do on vacation, I have had to find an alternative. When I explained to Mike that typing on an iPhone is very tedious to me and that I would probably write less for the rest of the trip, he asked me why I didn’t use the dictation technology that’s now available in Word. To be honest I haven’t tried dictation technology for many years, preferring to simply type away on my iPad, rationalizing that the process of typing allowed my brain to organize my thoughts at a pace that matched my writing of those thoughts.

The prospect of one finger iPhone typing for another week has caused me to give Mike’s idea a try. I am now dictating my stories and while this is only my second story down in this manner. I can tell that I’m getting better at it, and what I mean by that is that I am feeling more comfortable formulating the stories I want to tell in my mind and verbalizing them to paper (digital), and then going through some modest editing. It’s all working pretty well in my opinion. In fact, it may be an upgrade in my whole writing process. A week of doing this will certainly tell me whether that’s the case or not. If you notice a change in writing style, that will explain what you were sensing. I’ll be re-reading my own work several times to help me figure out whether I like the way my stories read when dictated versus when typed.