Prayer caller's chant is timeless in Egypt

'Music of Islam' sounds out 5 times a day

Asmaa Waguih/Los Angeles TimesMorsi Abdel Fattah has chanted the call to prayer for his mosque in Cairo for 20 years. He seeks ''divine reward.'' (Asmaa Waguih/Los Angeles Times)

CAIRO - His voice, throaty and full, is as known and intimate to this neighborhood as a mother hurrying her children home. It slices from the minaret, spreading over alleys, piercing the sounds of snapping sheets, whispering schoolgirls, scraping shovels, and the bargaining pleas of the broom seller:

"God is great. I testify there is no god but God. . . . Make haste toward prayers."

The prayer caller's chant is heard five times a day; from birth to death it is the music of Islam, lingering in the air, reminding the faithful to prostrate themselves before God. Morsi Abdel Fattah has sung these words for 20 years in this poor neighborhood, where cats slink and boys rush behind their fathers in the streets, learning the trades of tinker, mechanic, and mattress maker.

Abdel Fattah is easily spotted among other men; he has a white beard and gray eyes, a pressed tunic, and a prayer cap as snowy as a swan. He's compact, almost clenched, seems stern but is not, and walks the same way he delivers the call to prayer: direct lines, little flourish. When he's not at the mosque, he's two doors down selling rice and macaroni from tin pots at the shop he and his brother run.

"I am seeking divine reward," he said. "Since I was young, I've heard the prophetic saying that the muezzin [prayer caller] would have his head above the others on Judgment Day."

Such a belief can carry a man through the birth of his children, the loss of his job, the way the neighborhood changes. But it's mostly been good, he has to say, although the boy thieves have forced him to lock the mosque in the afternoon, and the women today want more than when he was a young man and offered his new bride a couch, a cupboard, and a bed.

"Now, these young women want three rooms furnished," he said, his finger, as it often does, pointing toward heaven. "That goes beyond the means of many men in this city. I think they've become too materialistic, too overexposed to the Internet."

His father, a mason, moved the family to this neighborhood half a century ago. It was the time of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Egypt was the center of the Arab world and a postwar boom was flooding Cairo with farmers and fishermen. The cliffs and rocky hills on the capital's outskirts were dynamited; the stones that fell were hewn into roads, houses, and mosques. Brick and mortar would replace the stone years later as buildings in Abdel Fattah's neighborhood grew higher, the streets more crowded.

Abdel Fattah took a job in a state-owned soap factory when he was 12. He learned the call to prayer; his voice quieted the machines as workers washed their hands and praised God. Economic reform and privatization decades later made jobs tight, and he accepted early retirement. The nation was changing. It was becoming tougher to live.

He and his wife raised four sons and a daughter, including one son who is a bank accountant and two who fix sewing machines. The family got used to his daily rituals that began before dawn and ended after sunset.

His is the voice the young here have grown up with, like a coaxing uncle in a large family, a voice that soothes the devout and reminds those who have fallen that they need to return.

"When someone stays away from God, there is a terrible void," he said. "But when you get closer to him, your soul is overwhelmed and it's enough to go into the mosque and bow before him. It is difficult for hypocrites and demons. It's God who decides whether to allow someone into his grace and it doesn't matter if he's rich or poor. You have to be content with what God gives you, even if it's only a bit of salt in your hand."

The mosque has expanded from one floor to three; its brown and ivory minaret, tipped with a crescent moon, rises over satellite dishes and fading flags from weddings past.

Abdel Fattah has the key to the big wooden doors. When it's time, the men sitting on the steps make way, and he glides through sunlight and shadow to the microphone. The loudspeaker crackles like a cicada, then quiets. After a breath:

"I testify that Mohammed is the messenger of God. Make haste toward prayers."