At bedtime, I take a thin sponge mattress off the living room bed, and spread it on the floor, cover it with a sheet, and lay down to sleep a full night of well deserved sound sleep. Only that it’s not a full night sleep and there is a lot of sound due to the air-planes at the Sahar airport in their entire decibel-might. My grandmother cannot sleep very much on the days she doesn’t get much exercise (read: every day). So she wakes up at 4 am and starts to clean the steel dishes, without intending to be noisy, I am sure. Then at 5 am, the alarm on her mobile phone goes off. I have tried to teach her how to turn it off, but she forgets. It stops after 40 rings. At 5:15 the muezzin of the local mosque decides to sound the azan on a loud microphone. He announces “prayer is better than sleep.” I am of the opinion that sleep, actually, is much better than prayer. While I am still dreaming of throttling the throat of a muezzin, at 5:45 am my mother’s mobile phone alarm goes off. I give up.
I still lay there, unable to open my eyes, aware of the loud reading of Koran and its translation read by my father after his morning prayers. He believes that we may get salvation if the holy words only as much as enters our mind through our ears.
I open my eyes and get up. I see my grandmother. An excitement takes over my body and mind. I can see her, in flesh and blood. She is not a voice from a telephone speaker as she has been for the last two years. I hug her. “Good morning Nani!”
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