adhan: the Islamic call to prayer, recited five times a day from mosques to call Muslims to daily ritual prayer


I watch your hands

            braid oiled dough into kleicha
pound cardamom and walnut

sugar and pistachio                                  	

churn dates into paste                 

and nestle their sweetness
in undulating folds
a sea of domed pastries

calling us to prayer
         until the sky turns black

                          and all communication is lost
*
                                                                        lines are cut

                                                       to blind us    while terror

                                                                               stalks the people

                                                                               like prey
like un     human

like rats in the dark
                                        sound is forced back into the throat

                          to choke us
only the mosque can

         call out to its people
                          bid them to communal prayer
                                                                        so that fear and faith bleed the air
and the adhan

                          breathes al-muqawama
                                                                 sings sumud
ya ahl al islam

ya ahl al islam

as salat as jama’ah
ya allah
ya                                                   

allah
                                        there is no one left but you
*
the domes have long turned to

                                        grey and dust
                                                       askew on the ground
                                                       bereft of minarets

                                                                 open to the sky

                                                                                                          but each globe

                                                                                                          remembers its echoes

             	                                                                                                          holds those lost sounds

             	                                                                                                          roiling in the sweep of its curves
             	                                                                                                                       a home for the

             	                                                                                                                       displaced
and I remember you tracing the air of

                                                       your grandmother
                                                                 as you pleat and fold and cup
         conjuring soft pillows

                                                       domed with secret delight
                                                                               holding the story of

                                                       golden liras buried inside
                                                                 a grandmother

                                                                                     smuggling home
resisting exile
and I know    like fallen acorns
         the domes wait for the soil to take them

                                                                 for life to sprout again
                                                                               for the muezzin

                                                                 to sing his song in the half-light
ashadu alla

ilaha

illallah


adhan: the Islamic call to prayer, recited five times a day from mosques to call Muslims to daily ritual prayer

kleicha: traditional Iraqi sweet pastries that date back to the ancient culinary traditions of the Sumerian period, particularly

made and eaten during the Islamic holy festivals of Eid-al-Fitr and Eid-al-Adha
al-muqawama: resistance
sumud: steadfastness
ya ahl al islam; as salat as jama’ah; ya allah: ‘oh people of Islam; communal prayer; oh God’. These words were

part of a broadcast over loudspeakers from a mosque in Gaza on 28 October 2023 during a deliberate electricity and

telecommunications blackout by the Israeli army
muezzin: the person who proclaims the call to prayer from the minaret of a mosque
ashadu alla ilaha illallah: ‘I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah’. This phrase is part of

the daily call to prayer for Muslims and the Islamic declaration of faith