The Athan at Dawn | أذان الفجر
"The muezzin's voice wakes the city. The woman who hears it wakes to something else—desire for the man who calls the prayer."
The Athan at Dawn
أذان الفجر
The voice wakes me every morning.
Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.
The muezzin of Qarawiyyin, calling Fajr. His voice is the most beautiful thing in Fes.
I'm in love with a voice I've never seen.
I'm Amira.
Forty, divorced, teaching English at the American school. I moved to Fes for adventure.
The athan became my obsession.
For months, it's just sound.
That haunting call, echoing through the medina before dawn. I wake for it now, listening, feeling something I can't name.
"You should see the sunrise from Qarawiyyin," my friend Leila suggests. "While the athan calls. It's magic."
I go.
Standing in the prayer courtyard, surrounded by centuries. Then his voice rises—and I see him.
He's maybe fifty.
Standing in the minaret doorway, voice pouring out like honey. His face is kind, ordinary, nothing special.
But that voice.
I can't stop going.
Every Fajr, I'm there. Watching him call the prayer. Watching the way his throat moves, his eyes close.
"You're becoming devout," Leila teases.
"I'm becoming something."
One morning, he sees me.
After the prayer, crossing the courtyard. He stops.
"You come every day now."
"I like the athan."
"Just the athan?"
His name is Youssef.
Muezzin for twenty years. Widower. Two grown children.
"Why do you really come?" he asks over tea.
"Because your voice makes me feel things I thought I'd forgotten how to feel."
"I'm just a muezzin."
"There's no 'just.' You call people to God. That's not small."
"And what do I call you to?"
"I haven't figured that out yet."
We meet after Fajr.
Tea and conversation in the sleepy medina. He tells me about his life—the decades of calling, the loss of his wife, the loneliness of being sacred.
"People don't see me," he admits. "They see the voice."
"I see you."
"Do you?"
"I see a man who's given his life to beauty. Who wakes before dawn because he believes it matters. Who's spent so long serving others that he's forgotten what it feels like to be served."
"That's... a lot."
"Is it wrong?"
"It's more right than anyone's ever been."
The first kiss is after Fajr.
In the empty courtyard, while the city sleeps. His voice has never touched anyone like this.
"Astaghfirullah," he breathes.
"For what?"
"For wanting this."
"God gave us wanting. It's what we do with it that matters."
We go to my apartment.
The athan still echoing in my ears, his voice everywhere.
"I haven't—" he starts.
"Neither have I. Not in years."
"Then we learn together."
He undresses me like I'm sacred.
The same reverence he brings to prayer, now directed at my body.
"Beautiful."
"Youssef—"
"Let me worship you. Let me use this voice for something new."
He describes what he's doing.
That voice—the one that calls the faithful—now calling my pleasure. Narrating touch, guiding desire.
"Here?"
"Yes—aiwa—"
"And here?"
"Ya Rabb—"
We make love while the city prays.
The sound of morning worship through the windows, our own devotions in the bed.
"Allahu Akbar," he whispers when we finish.
"That seems sacrilegious."
"Everything about you is sacred to me."
One year later
We're married now.
The Qarawiyyin community was shocked—their muezzin, remarrying. But no one can question his devotion.
"Happy?" I ask.
"Happier than I knew was allowed."
"Everything is allowed between us now."
He still calls the Fajr athan.
But now he comes home after. Comes to me.
"Good morning, wife."
"Good morning, voice."
He laughs. Makes love to me. The athan is better now, they say.
They don't know why.
Alhamdulillah.
For voices that call.
For women who listen.
For dawn that brings more than prayer.
The End.