First Days in Ramadan

Spent the past days in Tripoli, a city outside of Beirut. I was out on the balcony when it happened. I’m used to hearing the azan in Tripoli, but the first night in Ramadan was like this:

First, the “qari’” or the reciter from the Masjid starts reading verses from the Qur’an out loud on a microphone with speakers directed towards the center of the city. So, from my balcony, I hear the verses from the Qur’an. Beautiful. But. Wait a minute.

I can’t hear him properly, it’s as if there’s interference.

“Aunty, how come it sounds fuzzy?”

“See, what you’re hearing is not one but THREE speakers from three different masjids. One is straight ahead of you, up north. One is on your right, and another is on your left but they’re all hidden behind buildings”.

“Are they reading the same verses?”

“No, that’s why it sounds like Qur’an but you can’t make out the words”.

... :-) when the reading was over, the Maghreb Azan was on and this time it came from one Masjid. I looked at the balconies from buildings nearby. I could see people breaking their fast. Together. We all broke our fast together. One city. All listening to the same azan. We’re not checking our watches to make sure it’s time. There’s no doubt like that because the azan is our ‘watch/clock’.

When I came back to Beirut I had my first taraweeh prayer. There’s a masjid near my house. It was an adventure going there for the first time in Lebanon, first time fasting here, and first time praying taraweeh not with family in Tripoli, the South/camps, or in Canada.

There is a hadith that says, and I’m paraphrasing, the first part of Ramadan is mercy, the second part is forgiveness, and the last part is salvation from hellfire. For the first part, I sure felt the mercy. Alhamdullilah. I’m going to taraweeh again tonight, inshAllah.




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