Mrs G's mosque

I’ve mentioned the boutique shopping district of Bin Ashour Road as a nice walking route. The landmark to look for when walking around this part of town is Mrs G’s mosque. I’ve included this distance shot for scale, taken from the roof of the guesthouse.





Here it is up close. The story is that this mosque, supposedly belonging to Mrs G, will never be finished because it was discovered that it overlooked a men’s gym or spa or some such that should not be looked upon by certain eyes. I’m not sure of that, but I do know I’ve never seen a single person working on it. However, the additional rumour now is that work will be beginning again soon, so maybe whatever the problem is has been overcome, or bulldozed, or whatever. It looks like an unpainted clay model at night, I’ll try and get a photo of it some time.

See how tall the minarets are? The muezzins don’t have to climb them anymore for the call to prayer, as they now use a sound system (check out the mosque to the left, you’ll see the loudspeakers all over it and up the minaret; this picture was taken from a car as we drove past, so I know nothing about this mosque except that it’s very pretty and somewhere to the west of the guesthouse). This seems to have triggered a bit of a Red Queen race in minaret heights. I think it’s a shame because I find the call to prayer quite evocatively romantic (yes, even the dawn one, even on Friday morning) but the effect is ruined by feedback distortion.

In other news, the Ambassador arrived safely yesterday, as did the Dog. Despite my best efforts to ensure two drivers were sent to collect them separately from the airport, only one driver went so the Ambassador spent two hours out there waiting for the Dog to clear Customs. He had one of those surreal moments - he could clearly hear the Dog barking somewhere; he went back in to ask what was happening, and the officials were going, 'What dog? There's no dog here'.