November 1, 2006 – First Days in Kabul (04/20/07)

The Call to Prayer is one of the things you remember most in Kabul . The first few days you are quite jet-lagged and tired due to the extreme time zone change. The first morning you wake up at 4am, not knowing where you are and then you remember that you’re in . You focus in on the sound of the voice coming from a loudspeaker atop a minaret a few city blocks away. It has a haunting effect. A mullah is singing verses from the Koran in a monotone voice with little adornment but the sound is powerful.

My first morning was exactly like this. I had traveled from literally the other side of the globe. I woke up at around 4am and realized where I was. I began thinking about home, my parents and fiancé and a deep sadness hit me. What had I done? Why had I left home?

As the Call to Prayer began around 5:45am and chills ran up my spine, I knew that it would be okay. I knew there was a meaning behind why I had come to Kabul . I had come to help in whatever way I could. It wouldn’t be so bad. I had the full support of those closest to me. My brother was here with me too.

And then I heard the soft, beautiful sound of birds chirping in the trees outside. They had awakened. As I focused in on their music, a thought occurred to me. Through all the horrors, hardships and destruction that Afghanistan and its people had been through the past 26 years, one thing was constant.

The sound of waking birds had been heard every morning for a thousand years, despite the relatively recent din of rocket fire or the soft whispering of a mother to her sleeping children that they should awaken to the day.