I grew up in a house that was located right near train tracks. I remember when we first moved into the house, waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of the train horn as the train crossed from Canada into the US.  I remember thinking I would never sleep a full nights sleep ever again.  However; something changed, I soon became used to the sound of the train and it shifted from an annoyance that woke me up to a comforting sound of home.  When I moved into my very first apartment on my own it was a selling point for me that it was located close enough to the train tracks to hear them rumble by at night.  Trains were my nighty lullaby.

Upon moving to the Middle East I was nervous about the call to prayer that broadcasts through speakers from each mosque five times a day. I thought the call to prayer would wake me up early in the morning or bother me in some way.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

What is the call to prayer?:

Within the Islamic faith Muslim people pray 5 times a day. Muslims pray at dawn, midday, afternoon, evening, and night, the times vary based on the times of sunrise and sunset.  The call to prayer is sung live 5 times a day, 35 times a week and 150 times a month. When I first moved to Kuwait I thought that each Mosque just had a recording of the call to prayer that they scheduled to play at regular intervals.  It wasn’t until I was in Kuwait for a month that I learned that each of Kuwait’s 630 Mosques had someone signing live at each of the 150 calls to prayer in any given month. The call to prayer is a reminder of what times Muslims are to be praying.

It was amazing to me how quickly I have learned to love the call to prayer.  The call to prayer is such a beautiful sound.   It reminds me that many, many people in the world are taking this exact moment to focus on their faith.

The call to prayer is my new train, it is the sound of home.