It was 4am, and I was trying to lull myself into sleep. I listened to the ever-present, uneven swish of far distant cars, a sound sometimes joined by the single note of a bus, or the buzz of a scooter before dopplering off into the distance. Amidst these gentle, lapping waves of sound, I imagined I could hear single and cascading tones simmering up through the light blanket of noise, tones that weren't in accord with each other in pitch or length and somehow evinced the unevenness of the human voice. The sounds continued, multiplied, but they were never so pronounced as to be definitively other than the wind, cars, or busses passing in their journeying from wherever to wherever...

It was certainly possible that these were the sounds of morning prayer, and, as I threw off the sheet, finally renouncing the idea that I would succumb to sleep, I considered this sound's place in the aural fabric, the half tones rising and falling, ethereal, evocative in this world of devotion and religion, rife with mystery and fear, ominous and ancient.

Tiring of straining to hear the individual voice in prayer simmering through the wash of sounds, I pulled the sheet over me and worked on letting go in hopes of reaching that hypnagogic state which leads to sleep.

At 5am, I became conscious of silence—no cars, no voices—broken only by the beginnings of a sparrow's monotonous song in the dim light, and the clatter of kitchen pots nearby, signalling the start to the day.