Wednesday, August 15, 2018 10:17 AM

The older city looks different, now that I know the way out. Scouting the destination for a future trip, I find that I've entered the city again. I follow the map carefully, trusting it even where it's counter-intuitive. I come around a corner and see the minaret, silhouetted by a neon-red sun beneath the sliver of a crescent of the nearly new moon. The call to prayer, sounding the same as the last time I'd been there, echoes about. It's odd in its lack of oddness: the steady rhythm of the unaccompanied voice, the tonality, and what seem like implicit key changes sound western, without the bent notes and ornaments that I'd come to expect. As it fades, I wonder if I'd really been hearing something else.