Prayer on the Metro

So much religious fervor! Right now the mosque across the street is very loud. Someone is chanting things through the loudspeaker and a loud chorus of men is chanting back. I understood something about Allahu Akbar (God is Great) but I don´t understand anything else. Is this a Ramadan thing or a spontaneous thing? I don´t know, but I get uncomfortable hearing it.

Today on the Metro this woman started calling out parts of a prayer and pretty soon most of the women on the bus were responding to her in the same sort of call-response thing. Jayanthi says that it happens a lot of the time that she is on the Metro in the women´s car. (Did I ever tell you about the women´s car? It is the first one and is great because no men allowed. It too often smells like sweaty polyester, but it´s worth it.) In one guide book I read (to paraphrase a bit) that the "Metro is unlike anything else in Cairo... clean, no-smoking, and it runs on time."

Today I went on a felucca ride, which means I rode on a boat on the Nile with some friends, for two hours in celebration of a friend´s girlfriend´s birthday. In more small-world news, it turns out that I saw her, Nora, play violin last year at a concert in Atlanta (Mirah, for those of you who know). How crazy!

Now the men are singing, which I find to be much more enjoyable. Time to go back and keep writing my mid-term.