Rain

I know it’s been a while, and there is a lot to write about – including the fact that I just spent a week in Germany for my R&R – but I’ll get back to that later.

Things have changed since I came back. It’s Ramadan in the Muslim world, and the calls to prayer from the mosque seem louder than ever. This means that my daily reminder of Ramadan begins with the first prayer coming over the loudspeaker at 4:30 AM, not from one – but two – different nearby mosques. Although usually I have been able to sleep through this, I woke up easily this morning, probably in part due to the fact that I was cold. Yes, the temperature at night has dropped by quite a bit. In fact, it even rained last night and I took a little early morning stroll out to the garden with my cup of Nescafe in hand to check out the damp ground. The smell of damp pavement was oddly refreshing and despite my general dislike of precipitation, I was rather excited to see it here in Iraq, fleeting as it seems to have been.