Call of Prayer

Author: Tantalize Copyright © 2008
Location: Kuwait

The mosque behind my house is in between, tucked away residential streets. It rests on a corner; appearing uneventful. The walls are a dull sandy color like the blotches of desert around it. Few of the air-conditioners half work. Cracked walls on the outside of the building reveal layers of fresh paint that are haphazardly slopped on. It’s a Sunni temple. Privately funded by elderly neighbors who are approaching death, repenting for their younger lives by donating as much as possible for their earlier sins.

The mosque houses outer rooms for an Imam, or even a Sheikh. But they are rarely used. Employed with protracting-bellied Somalis, they live for free in exchange for managing the cleanliness of the entire mosque. They order Bangladeshi and Indian migrant workers, who are newly Islamicized, with violent and commanding speech to do much of the menial work instead. The Somalis are treated the same in turn when their Kuwaiti benefactors show up.

The call of prayer lures in followers five times a day. They are seduced, even hypnotized into the mosque in droves, like zombies upon command. From various corners, the adults move toward along the tired voice of the call for prey, in which an Afghani or Pakistani usually has the task of calling out. The voice is a weak attempt at Classical Arabic, and an abomination to the beauty which the Holy Quran was written in. Some of the call is barely interpretable. Yet, it beams uninterrupted from the towering minaret. Slowly, the believers, or perpetual believers, are comatosed in like sheep. Numb with a tinge of indifferent faces. A few others run to catch the call of prayer. Headgear and dishdashas loosen along the way. Speeding to catch the early pupils of God. They run to try to lesson any of their ill-begotten guilt, letting go of any self-dignity along the way.

A few hundred meters before entering the gates, children play; teasing and chasing one another with energetic laughter. Once within the gates, that energy transforms into a wickedly strict discipline. Few cars in the parking lot are parked sloppily, drastically off the contained lines made for individual cars, deliberately defying country laws and social discipline. On the outside of the religious structure, one or two contracted streets cleaners are seen pausing, watching the Muslims streamline into Islamic unity into the mosque. These cleaners mysteriously show up whenever calls of prayer take place, with pitiful faces and half-stemmed, begging hands.

When the prayers end, the freshly inducted have looks of calm, with more fulfilled smiles than before they entered: With appetized looks. The children, heads slanted down, kick rocks unenthusiastically going home. Their energies sapped out from their carefree, irreligious natures. The Somalis radiate full teethed smiles, waving farewell to the elderly Kuwaitis, then giving stern looks to the Asians.

The prayed upon – ones who have just prayed – depart this temporary yet abstract illusory place of worship not only because they may feel spiritually replenished, but because of finishing being called in to come and dutifully pray for a reward they have little understanding of ever calling in themselves.

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