Muezzin-Immobiliere

Five times a day the call to prayer comes from loudspeakers hung from the outside of mosques. It’s hard to describe how many mosques there are. The other night at dinner, I could see three looking out the restaurant window, though that only counted three distinctive minarets. Walk through the medina and you will pass one every block or two. Each mosque has a muezzin, the man who gets on the PA system and does the call to prayer. Of course, back in the day, the muezzin climbed to the top of the minaret and shouted his call for all to hear, but the speakers have made his job a little easier. You’ve all heard the beginning of it, ”Allah u Akbar,” or God is great. But now, we hear it coming from hundreds of Mosques all in close proximity, and we’ve begun to hear the variety. It is like a classic song, being interpreted in different ways by different singers. Some give a more or less straightforward reading, others seem quite demanding and there are a few who seem to rival Celine Dion in their ability to hold and shape a note into a veritable ballad. I’ve started wondering if there’s some sort of unspoken competition between the muezzin to give the best call to prayer.

I might be able to find out soon. We’ve been house hunting, and Hammoud has taken us to his friend M’hamed, who is an Immobilier, or real estate agent, to see a variety of properties. Today, M’hamed needs to leave suddenly in the middle of the afternoon, and Hammoud tells us that in addition to being an Immobilier, her is also a Muezzin and a mosque quite close to us. I’m very excited. I learn that the country pays each of the Muezzins, as well as the Imam for each mosque. M’hamed cleans the mosque each day, does the call to prayer five times, and then is free the rest of the time to sell or rent real estate. I don’t have the nerve to ask him yet if he competes with the other muezzin to give the best call to prayer. We’ll see.



There’s one house that seems affordable and interesting so we go back to take another look. Here’s M’hamed, our Muezzin-Immobilier in the courtyard. You’ll notice everything looks green. While riads come with an open courtyard layout, many Moroccans prefer to cover the top of the opening to keep out sun and rain and dust. In the case of this house, the courtyard is topped with a roof of green plastic, which gives the place its distinctive pallor.


Here I am with M’Hamed and Hammound discussing possible upgrades to the house.