Ramhadan

Its 3:30am, my first morning in Indonesia, and I am awake. Jet lag. Dead awake; draped with moonlight lathed into a crisp shaft by the lattice above the window. I roll around, thinking that I will fight my way back into sleep. And then, with a conspicuous click-pop-fizz, the morning call to prayer begins. It starts out with a lone tremulous voice but shortly, as soggy eyed devoted one by one put finger to button (most mosques have entered the electronic age, and I wonder if the imams ever thought to unionize), one mosque becomes many, turning my ears on end and the valley of Cinere into a buzzing bellows of sound--punctuated by the shrieks of rush hour in the tropical forest. The fact that I know all the sounds I am hearing are electric does not faze me, at this point scuttling around the house trying to pinpoint the source(s) of all the vibrations washing over the house. Finally, I decide, with firm certainty, that the sound is coming at me from all directions. Right.
Wild eyed, as the voices drop out as the came in and the jungle freeway settles down to a regular flow, I walk outside for my first cup of Indonesian coffee, a cup unusually spiced by the peppery waft of gunpowder from Muslim children's bamboo bombs.