I would stay late sometimes. Not in summer when it seemed as though the whole world stayed late, but in winter when the doors were locked and the entire city was tucked in safely behind them against the chill. I grew up in the farmlands, I grew in the forests -- I live on quiet, search it out, wait for it as I must. I am a quiet woman; my husband was a quiet man; our street is a quiet near alleyway. And so the night would only be broken by the hastened footfalls of the odd passers-by or stray cats fighting in the distance, and at long last by the beautiful, so beautiful, voices of mostly old men echoing one other's call of the athan.

It is, in the end, always the seemingly nondescript moments which come back to us the most, and which carry with them the most weight of feeling for the longest span of time.