It’s Lovely. For a Moment

Up early taking care of travel details on the back of a dahabiya on the Nile.  We must be ten miles upriver from Edfu which was lovely.  One and then another thing just floated by.  Large clumps of something, that are disconcerting in the dark.  No.  They’re not bodies.  There’s a lovely bird that has sounded off now three times in the distance.  I had wanted to watch the stars again this morning but there wasn’t as much to see as I’d expected and by now, using my star gazer app, it’s clear there are some wonderful stars out there but none to be seen unassisted, now that the sun is beginning to rise. 

At three in the morning, the call to prayer began.  We’re moored across the river from what must be a small city.  One and then another and ultimately a half a dozen mosques at rock-concert volumes began their mournful calls, one after the other.  It’s lovely.  For a moment.  And certainly, it’s their country and their faith.  But it went on for nearly fifty-minutes, which seemed indulgent.  The voices are always men.  One assumes that any attempts to suggest that the electric calls to prayer, such as these are, should be at odds with tradition Muhammad initiated, would be roundly shouted down.  What is within the reach of the human voice might not be so bad, but with amplification and reverb its all rather overpowering. 

If there is one at three in the morning, when is the next one?  Presumably there will be something at sunrise?  I hope we’ve moved on by then.  There’s some screeching now in the woods on the far shore.  I wonder if that shrill sound is a flock of parrots.  It’s light and cool out here in the morning.  The rooms don’t have air con at night, only when they have the generator on.  I’ve sat here for nearly two hours now on the bank of the Nile and not one mosquito or fly has bothered me.  In the back of my mind I keep remembering the term “West Nile Virus” and wondering what that was and whether or not there were mosquitos involved in the transference of that infirmity.  There must be a healthy number of natural predators here, that gobble up on the mosquitos.  That or it just isn’t the season. 

Apparently, it has been as much as one hundred degrees Fahrenheit during our time here.  We’re heading south, closer and closer to the equator and the border with Sudan, so it is only reasonable that it all gets hotter.  But it’s a dry heat and I haven’t been overly bothered, though some of the family find it enervating.  I keep thinking of the moist hot of New York or Hong Kong which to my reckoning, is much less tolerable.  That or I remind the girls of our time in Dubai which must have been one-hundred-and-ten degrees and although dry, truly felt life threatening, as we walked outside for more than a few meters. 

It’s been nice to watch the village on the other side of the shore take form and color from what had otherwise been lights in the black night.   The sun will rise soon, off to my right.

Tuesday, 7/9/12