Call to Prayer

When we first found out we were moving to Istanbul, I knew that the Call to Prayer was played through the city. I'm one who likes quiet. Especially during nap times. I don't normally nap (except now, when preggers), but I do use my kids nap times as my quiet time. When you have three kids in a small house, it just get too loud. After a while I just can't focus. So when my quiet time is interrupted by builders, basketballs, noisy kids, etc, it just ruins my evening. So the fact that someone was going to be yelling at me in a language I didn't know, I was wondering just how I was going to deal with it.

 During our look and see trip, when we were in the Hilton, I barely heard it. Nice. I might be able to handle this! And as we looked at places to live, I tried to make an effort to notice the noise level. The original apartment we chose, really locked out the noise. I was really surprised. There was even construction next door and once you close the door or window, you barely heard anything! Now that we are living here in a different apartment… it is a bit different. The three times we looked at our apartment, it was always so peaceful. I don't think we heard the Call once. The weekend we moved it… that completely changed. Life on our street is noisy!! There are small Mosques just down the street and just up the hill. So when the time comes for Call to Prayer, we get it in surround sound. You can even hear distant Mosques when they are slightly behind.

 Over the months, I've really gotten used to it. For a while there, the guy was not very good. That made it just annoying. But, I decided to use it as a reminder to pray to my own God. Kind of made it my meditation time. Some days (especially during the Christmas season), I would swear that they were singing a certain song or maybe a Christmas carol. I got to where I was singing Christmas songs over the Call to Prayer. I'm sure I'm probably offending millions of people with that. Finally, we got a guy that could sing!  I got to the point where I would miss most of them. Including the 6am ones! Heck before the time change, I would know what time it was just from the Call. Great since we don't have many clock in the house. But around when the time changed, so did the Call to prayer. It started getting earlier and earlier, and the last one later and later. Most mornings I'm awake at 4am listening to the Call. And most night, Nate is crying because of late Call. Last night, it was 10:40pm. And we have yet another guy doing the Call. And he's not anywhere as good as the last guy. So I"m to the point that its getting annoying again.


 After living in this noisy city, Detroit will definitely feel like the country when we get back! LOL. I'm really curious to how many people in Istanbul, actually follow the Call to Prayer. Because I can tell you that you don't see people on the street running to the Mosque or that the number is any less during the Call. People really don't seem to stop from their lives. I wonder at what point will the people at Istanbul will just say we're done?