The Sunrise

A few days ago, I woke up around 5:30 and couldn't sleep. Many mornings I awake to the call to prayer or even pigeons cooing on my window sill, but that wasn't the case this time around. Sometimes on the weekends, the noisy aftermath of all-night weddings might wrench me from my slumber. But that wasn't the case this time. There are usually no weddings on Thursday nights and certainly not the week of Eid al Kabir.

I may not have known why I woke up, but I did know what to do with my time. I sat up in bed and started reading.

An hour later, it was becoming clear that I wasn't going to fall back to sleep. So I made myself some coffee and a bowl of cereal. I sat down on the couch near the southward-facing window. I turned on a light to read while I ate, but by the time I had finished my cereal, the artificial light was becoming increasingly unnecessary.

I stood gazing out of our 7th floor window at the sky. Some taller buildings were blocking my view of the horizon, but I could tell the sunrise was on its way. The sky above the buildings had shaded from the black of night to a magnificently dark blue, and the clouds had emerged from the darkness as palettes of pastels.

I sipped my coffee and watched from my window until all the colors had resolved to the white and blue of day.

An Indian Summer on Steroids

For the last month or two, the weather here seemed impervious to Earth's shifting axis. While most places I have lived shift into fall sometime in September or October, my new hometown of Meknes, Morocco weathered on as if Fall were a state of mind. Temperatures regularly approached 100 and I sweated every time I walked anywhere.

But then November came. On Sunday night, while sitting outside at a cafe with my friend, I found myself rubbing my arms to keep warm. That night, a thick fog, strangely out-of-place here in Morocco, settled over the city. And then during the night, I had to wrap myself tightly into my recently purchased wool blanket to escape the chill. The trend continued last night; it rained. And today while walking to lunch at noon, for the very first time in my Moroccan experience, a daytime breeze felt chilly.

The high temperature is still in the 80s, but it is declining fast. I have been told tales of miserable winters, damp and soggy in houses without heat. I keep telling myself it can't be that bad. After months of sunshine and sweat, it is hard to imagine this wonderful country giving me anything else.