...a combination that always works well.
The Moazzen starts singing the same moment the storm hits. I am on a bridge at the time, sitting on the lintel. The people of Kuala Lumpur, sensing the change in the air, all start running. But my clothes are the kind that dry out fast, and I have nowhere to be.
I can’t tell where the lighting is. It bounces off too many shiny buildings. The whole city is a thunderclap. The rain however, in the heat, is bliss.
And the wind picks up and the Moazzen keeps singing, and my brain is filled with the things the man in the mosque was telling me. About the layout of the building, what it meant. And other things like that. What the Moslem view of God is. Things I knew and things I didn’t know, as we sat on the floor of a grand white hall.
I smile at a man running by, and he smiles back. But obviously wonders at me. Sitting on the rail like a grinning storm-imp. Getting far too excited over the whole thing. The sound and the fury and the monotheism.
You can’t draw god, he’d said, the man in the mosque. I knew that already, but he put it more forward in my mind. Depicting god is a worship of an image that is not God, as God cannot be drawn, or comprehended. And all around. I’m not a particularly religious man, but when one steps out of The National Mosque into a thunderstorm, one can’t help feel just a little spiritual.
I buy mystery fruit from a market stall. I want to say I enjoy it, but I find it sickly sweet.
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