Up on the Roof
Last night, not being able to sleep, I went to the roof to do some prayers and zikr under the starlit sky. That was beautiful. There is rarely a time when I do not find the roof a beautiful place to be, except maybe in the heat of the mid-day sun. That’s the time to retrieve the laundry, when everything is dry but the sun is not yet fading the colors. It’s fall here now, though the leaves don’t change color and I’m told winter will be here very soon.
The morning, right after prayers is also prime time on the roof. The sky will still be dark when you get there, but the sun is about to come up. Some of the small bats are chirping but will soon go to sleep.
The first birds start singing at fajr, along with the roosters. I prefer waking up to them, like I did in Michigan than to the loud wailing of the mullahs all over town who intone, Prayer is better than sleep. Are they sure about that? Now they’ll start to fly. There are some large birds, akin to vultures but much more graceful. They’ve got a large wing span that makes it easy for them to flap their wings a few times and then glide, soaring and dipping at will. They head to a field not too distant from my house where they hold their morning conference. Sometimes I can see them flying with long pieces of straw or sticks, perhaps to take back to their nests.
Crows and smaller birds prefer to confer on the telephone wires. They perch there or congregate in the trees. Some of these trees brush the rooftop of our one story abode. It’s marvelous to watch them squawk at each other, like quarreling spouses. The crows here are larger than in the States. Their bodies are a dusty black and their faces a grayish white. These smaller birds land on our lawn as soon as I’ve scattered any leftover bread, proudly carrying the bigger pieces off to the nearby trees. Their shrill squawking implies that they do not share the booty they’ve made off with.
On one occasion I saw two hood-hoods. That’s the Arabic name for a brown and white bird with a fringe of feathers on its head, somewhat like a Mohawk haircut. They are small and need to flap their short wings quite often as they fly, as do the crows and sparrows.
On top of the neighbor’s chicken coop, just below my back wall, I found Diana, our adopted cat. She was curled up in a ball, fast, asleep after her evening adventures. I caught a shot of her sleeping with my camera. When I went for the second shot, she suddenly opened her green, green eyes and stared straight up at me. I got a great shot and then told her to go back to sleep.
The sun is rising in the eastern sky. Slowly but surely, its spherical redness rises in the sky. Today it is quite distinct and self contained, its ruddy reds, pinks and oranges are not bleeding into the sky, which is turning from its dawn grayness to a bluer than blue beauty.
