Morning Prayer, Istanbul

“Istanbul before dawn. The ezan starts from one minaret and then another answers and then another until the whole city is singing. You're on the hotel roof with tea — those tulip glasses, two sugar cubes, the spoon still in. The Bosphorus is pewter. Pigeons lift off Sultanahmet in a wave. Fishermen already on the Galata Bridge, lines in the water. The simit cart rolls past below, the rings of bread stacked impossibly high. The city wakes in layers: prayer, then pigeons, then bread, then traffic. For five minutes the only sound is the ezan and it fills everything. You're not Muslim but you understand.”