ADHAN –By Prospero O. Anuforo.

I was in JSS3 around the time. And we had moved from Surulere, a place fast becoming completely industrial,  to the crowded, residential area of Igando. I was schooling at Sanya Grammar School in Surulere, and had to finish my  JSS3 there before applying for a transfer at the Lagos State Ministry of Education to a school closer to our house in Igando. So, for one full year, I had to wake up really early to beat what I still think is the father of all Go-Slows in the whole of Lagos: the Iyana Ejigbo to Jakande Estate jam. Faada Lawd.

It's not exactly a jam, if you looked at it another way. Rather, it was a daily conference of frustrated Lagosians, sardined in rickety buses, hiding the dogging poverty of the various slums they were coming from in fancy clothes and sophisticated perfumes, fanning themselves, speaking English, hoping the buses they were on would gain even an  inch every 20 minutes. These were the ones who worked in the Industrial areas on the mainland and the high society of the Island, but whose salaries couldn't pay the rent there. So they all lived here in the crowded slums of the  residential areas that had no good jobs. They would rather spend half their salaries on transportation to the good jobs in those highrise buildings. They were always torn between two worlds, neither of which they truly belonged. I would be on the road by 5:30AM, and I would see them racing and jumping and fighting to get on Danfos and Molues so as to make it to work at 8AM. Then face the same or worse ordeals coming back, clothes rumpled, perfumes overpowered by the stink of sweat, energy sapped, sitting in the same buses with hard wooden seats and rusty metal backrests. And they won't get home until 10PM, or well after.


To beat that dreaded jam, I used  to leave home no later than 5:30AM. What I came to call "Rising upon the first Allahu Ahkbar". Well, the only alarm clock I could count on at the time was the Adhan call from the mosque some three streets from our house. I can still remember how the Megaphone hanging up the mosque roof sent piercing glitches that sliced through the silence of the sleeping neighborhood. I stay in bed, taking in the voice. I would wait until Baba Fatai, our Muslim  neighbor, was out doing his ablution wash. Then I would rise, stretch out and hit the bathroom.

Sometimes, when the call to prayer (or Adhan, as it is called in Islam) hit my ears, I would want to just roll over and sleep some more.  But then, I would taste over the familiar texture of the muezzin's voice. I would listen to the rise and fall and inflection of sounds as he called. I would ask myself, isn't that another human being, up and about already? Geht up, lazy boy.

I never got to meet that muezzin. But we became friends. I knew his voice. I knew his glottal stops. I knew the days when he had a very hectic previous day. My God, I knew him.
You're asking how can I be friends with sounds? I can't explain it, too.

I tried to find out about him, asking our neighbor's kids who went for prayers there. But I kept getting different names.

When I said the voice of the muezzin had a rich ring to it, they said: "rich? It should be the Imam. He is very rich."

When I said the muezzin must be a good singer, they said: "oh, it's Alfa Qundus. He sings the Adhan in strange ways, because he likes trying something new."

When I said the muezzin must be well versed in the the Quran, they said: "ah, it's Boda Saheed. He reads the Quaran in his sleep."

When I said the muezzin had never been late to the call, they said: "mmm...it's Alpha Kareem. They say he has a jinn that wakes him up every day."

I don't know why, but I settled for Alpha Kareem. Because there must be some spiritual thing about being able to keep up with doing this every single day. To sing even when you had a bad time the day before. It was his jinn that made it all possible. Sometimes I would imagine it was his jinn that woke me up too. It made me feel special.

But this one day, everything changed. I had had a fight with Stella in class the day before. I don't know what I ever did to her. She just hated me. Nothing I did was good. My older friends had told me it was because she liked me. That girls did that when they liked a boy. Then Ori, the oldest boy in my class, had told me to just walk up to her, pull her into a hug and kiss her when next she tried to pick a quarrel again. Hadn't I seen it done in American movies? I had. But, how could I do that? Kiss Stella? That girl who had a tongue of spear? Sanya Grammar School would burn to ashes, any day I as much as thought of it.  I tossed around in bed, trying to stop my mind from conjuring up her scowling face.

The mosque Megaphone came on, all glitches. It was time to rise already, and I hadn't even caught a nap. I thought Alfa Kareem's jinn overstayed on that day. I could have played possum and waived school for that day to have a good sleep. But we had Maths test. And Mr. Asho, our Maths teacher, peppered your back with his cane for doing poorly in his tests, talk of missing any. I stayed in bed, thinking and waiting to taste over Alpha Kareem's voice and to harangue myself into rising as usual. But something strange happened.
It was the same voice, with the familiar ring in tact. But he was singing Adhan like an R&B singer. Like some R. Kelly. It became a call to listen, and not a call to rise and leave.

I left home late on that day. As my bus sat in the Jakande jam, I put my head on the metal backrest of the seat in front of me. And, between sleeping and waking, I made up my mind to dare something new and dangerous in its difference: once I got to school, I would pull Stella into a hug and kiss her. Let Sanya Grammar School burn to ashes, if it would.

Prospero O. Anuforo is a writer and poet.  He curates Pigin Paarol on Asiri Media as Pipiro.