{I am heading home today! I am excited to be getting back to the US. I have a few more blog posts to put up, which I will put online over the next week. My return journey will take over 24 hours. Two 9hr flights and a 7 hour layover at Heathrow. I should be back in Seattle on Friday! Or Thursday, I forget how the timing works out. Either way, Kenneth has the flight info, so I should have a ride home.}
Why are all these guys standing?
On Friday nights I took the train to get home. I usually got in at around 8pm, about the same time the mosque at the train station held its evening prayers. As I got off the train I’d hear the call to prayer wailing over the loudspeakers. I think that Friday is the day you have to go to the mosque, it’s like their Sunday morning. I would weave my way through the crowd of passengers, moving towards the cry of the prayers, up and down the stairs and out of the station. At the exit there would be a wall of Muslim backs. The men were in rows, all facing east, from the mosque at one end to the ric queue at the other. The mosque is a small one, attached to one end of the station’s ticketing office. They would commandeer the pavement out in front of the train station by rolling out long reed mats, and the faithful would come and line up with their prayer mats. There were usually a lot of cops around too, to make sure there was no trouble, I guess. The first time I saw the whole process it seemed very exotic and foreign to me, with the chanting and the everyone in white kurtas and caps. No women though. I guess the kind of Muslim that people are here doesn’t allow women in the mosque. It seems that one kind does, one kind doesn’t.
Why are all these guys standing?
On Friday nights I took the train to get home. I usually got in at around 8pm, about the same time the mosque at the train station held its evening prayers. As I got off the train I’d hear the call to prayer wailing over the loudspeakers. I think that Friday is the day you have to go to the mosque, it’s like their Sunday morning. I would weave my way through the crowd of passengers, moving towards the cry of the prayers, up and down the stairs and out of the station. At the exit there would be a wall of Muslim backs. The men were in rows, all facing east, from the mosque at one end to the ric queue at the other. The mosque is a small one, attached to one end of the station’s ticketing office. They would commandeer the pavement out in front of the train station by rolling out long reed mats, and the faithful would come and line up with their prayer mats. There were usually a lot of cops around too, to make sure there was no trouble, I guess. The first time I saw the whole process it seemed very exotic and foreign to me, with the chanting and the everyone in white kurtas and caps. No women though. I guess the kind of Muslim that people are here doesn’t allow women in the mosque. It seems that one kind does, one kind doesn’t.
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