A film-clip kind of early wake difficult to credit. The first rousing had taken place earlier, shortly before 4. It was getting back an hour later and just beginning to drift off again that the cock's crow rose from below the twenty-three storeys, penetrating the glass. Outside the window the National Art Gallery a few hundred meters across the way, a giant banner of the slyly smiling PM draping another block and Petronas Towers hidden on the other side. A woman beside the mosque kept a number of hens and a brilliant copper-colored rooster with the usual quick-dart tricks. Overnight the chickens were placed in cages under an alcove behind a flap curtain by the back door; through the day they roamed along the laneway seeking the scraps from the wet market up the other end. At that height the call was thin, but with the back-of-throat insistence retained, and shortly afterward as if on cue with a brief over-lap included, the muezzin entered the chorus. This fellow had been heard a number days; the night before dinner had been delayed awaiting his evening cry. An exceptional, chosen talent clearly, perfect as an advertisement for Islam. Listening one imagined the low plaintive moan must have carried across the entire valley that was visible through the window and up into the distant hills, the plea being voiced and the abasement producing an effect that was something like eavesdropping on the most intimate confession. An untutored, natural voice—everything this man had attained had been through his own perseverance. All the busy life of the city yet to begin, the traffic, the work in all the quarters, duties and cares of the day, this man was casting far in advance of it all and well beyond, including all together in his cry. In Malaysia and other parts of the Islamic world they held nation-wide Qur’anic reading competitions that always attracted a great deal of notice. That morning the amplification was low; quite possibly it may even have been pure voice resounding within the walls of the minaret, where from the street the old fashioned mega-phones could be seen mounted on the high ledges pointing to the four corners of Chow Kit. If the microphones were employed that morning it had been low on the dial.
A couple of nights before there had been a marvelous folkloric group in robes with shawls over their shoulders and wound turbans leaning against vans chatting at the gate of the mosque. Another group in similarly striking dress with a Kublai Khan figure in their midst was seated at the adjacent Eatery. Merdeka Day—fifty-five years of independence. Snippets of PM Najib at the National Stadium in the evening on TV had been a more familiar production, including the football-like cheer-squad thrice thrusting raised fists for the Freedom call at the end. Stolen election it turned out subsequently, reports suggested.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2015
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