Soundscapes of Irritation… And Hope
Essay and photography by Jill
My top suggestion for “what to bring if you’re coming to visit the Middle East” is…. silicone earplugs. Not foam ones. Silicone putty ones, that you use for kids with grommets who go swimming. I speak from nine years of trial and error to find a way to a good nights sleep. Sound pollution is not a concept here.
The upside is that it really creates a community vibe. You never feel alone. After Ramadan, it’s wedding season and many evenings I can hear Arab drums and the joyful chants of a wedding procession, called a zaffa. I can hear kids pouring out of school in the early afternoon chattering and yelling to each other as they walk home. I hear vendors yelling out their wares. I can hear young men driving around ‘enjoying’ being alive and pumping out Arab doof-doof. I hear an old man wheeling his cart past, playing a cheerful, pre-recorded song inviting children to come eat fairy floss. I hear taxi drivers honking at pedestrians, inviting via honk ‘would you like a ride?’. Sometimes I’m delighted to hear hooves on bitumen and the jingle of bells and I look out my window to see an urban shepherd leading his goats to new desolate pastures via our busy road. It’s all become so normal that when I visit Australia I feel eerily lonely as I go for a walk around the suburbs. Where is the noise, the activity and the people?
But it’s also really tiring. The incessant, irritating noises that drain away any inner calm.
There’s the traffic noise. Weary old vans grunt, strain and chug up the hill in front of my apartment, carrying gas bottles for cooking and potatoes stacked in styrofoam crates. I can feel the pollution spewing out, the earth heating up by degrees. So much loud and irritating honking. There’s the short, jarring honks that communicate ‘hurry up, move along’. These honks can descend into sustained loooooong jarring blasts of frustration, accompanied by angry threats. The tired whine of brakes from yellow school buses that worryingly sound like they’re about to give out. The guy blaring out something from the megaphone atop his beat-up truck. Your first thought is that he’s campaigning for the next election. But then you learn enough Arabic to understand he’s just yelling out for gas bottle refills or scrap metal.
How about the fruit and veg shop across the road? They had a grand opening featuring an enthusiastic man with a microphone set on reverb, announcing the price of discounted tomatoes in between Arab pop songs. This went on every Thursday til Saturday, afternoons and evenings, for three months straight. A man was selling Syrian pastries from the back of his van all summer. This sounds delightful, but he parked in front of our apartment block, his business hours were 8pm til midnight and his marketing technique was a pre-recorded three word announcement, in a bored voice, on repeat, blasting out the loudspeaker on the top of his van, all night. The entertainment continues every morning before 7:30am, when the principal of the local school turns on her microphone and begins yelling kids names, trying to bring order to chaos, followed by the national anthem, blaring from a loudspeaker which the whole neighbourhood can hear. Of course because we are in the Muslim world, five times a day all the mosques proudly summon believers to prayer via loudspeaker, and on Fridays they broadcast the sermons which sound like an hour of incoherent shouts.
But then there’s the birds.
They make me smile. How incessantly cheerful they seem to be. Somehow, birds have found a home in this grimy, noisy environment. I know very little about birds, but I know these ones are not traditionally beautiful. There are some type of pigeons, dumpy in shape, their feathers shades of grey and dirty brown, experts in cooing and optimistically building nests in any possible location. There are some other smaller birds which are also grey/brown and they chirp a lot. But actually they are all beautiful. They don’t seem bothered by their grimy environment. They thrive in their urban playground, bouncing on powerlines, perching and flitting around building edges, nesting, always singing. When spring comes, the pigeons start leaving piles of sticks on my window sill and suddenly an egg or two appears in this base model nest. They don’t seem defeated when their eggs roll off. (I have to confess that once I unfortunately accidentally decapitated a mother pigeon who was sitting on her nest in the dark and, as usual in the evenings, I rapidly rolled down my metal window aperture. I discovered her the next morning. Eek). They just keep getting on with living, cheerfully.
Sometimes I’m particularly irritated by life here. Sometimes I’m beyond irritated and I’m angry, sad and have become infected with hopelessness. Not just because of the grinding gears of the trucks, the angry honks or the man selling Syrian pastries until midnight. But because of the injustice and hopelessness of a woman with no way out of an abusive marriage, or children without anything to eat except stale flat bread and sugary tea. I feel I’m called here to be a champion of the poor, to love and embody the love of Jesus. Along the way, I’ve also been called to be a leader. These identities and responsibilities are heavy and for long stretches can feel barren. Injustice, poverty, hopelessness and hardness of heart goes on. I go to bed weary.
My favourite time of the day is early morning. It’s quieter, it feels hopeful and the birds are loud. Their singing rises above the stirring sounds of people, engines and horns. Some days I’m up really early and I hear them before dawn. They begin singing in the darkness. This dissonance always stirs me. I think, ’Hey you guys, can’t you see how broken this world is? Why are you cheerful everyday? Are you naive?’. But despite my cynical thoughts, something softens inside me.Thejoy of these birds is infectious.
On reflection, Jesus didn’t think birds are naive. In fact, he commanded us to look to them as role models for us, in their anxiety-free, hopeful living. They are prophetic. They are worshippers. They are an embodied reminder of the certainty that one day all will be well and we will receive and experience all that has been promised. Redemption, healing, peace and glory. They are subversive and remind me every single day that I too can have joy and hope in the darkness in which I live, before the coming dawn. They are calling me to be a worshipper before I am anything else.
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Jill - Regular Contributor
Jill grew up in Albany, studied in Perth & Sydney but now lives with some friends and a baby tortoise (Turbo) in the Middle East. She helps lead a team doing community health programs and works as a GP with Syrian refugees. Learning Arabic was the hardest thing she’s undertaken. In her work she’s passionate about seeing the unseen people and helping Arab teenage boys learn emotional literacy and their God given identity. She enjoys textures, colours, photography and laughing at ridiculous ideas.