About three o’clock a.m. I wake to a different sound of shooting. It might be a real quarrel with lots of mixed weapon fire and not done in the usual artistic rhythmic patterns, but just random blasting, like people trying to kill each other. Then along with the shooting there are some big definitive explosions—have the cops entered the fight with mortars and grenades? Then, at four a.m., amplified chanting from six or seven local mosques comes on and the firing diminishes. This chanting is not just a simple “call to prayer”, but entire chapters from the Koran being sung. I can simultaneously hear at least four singers clearly and others more indistinctly—all singing different words at different pitches and to different tunes. It is very musical in a bizarre way. One thing sure, no matter how cold or dark, nobody is going to sleep through the “call to prayer” here.
So it’s shooting through most of the night
And praying in between
And I hope I don’t stay here long enough
To get used to the routine.
Incidentally, the police and the army forced their way into Old Tripoli in early January and drove out the “bandits” that had taken over the neighborhood so there is no more shooting.
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