It’s 7:09pm. Just a few minutes after the muezzin’s call to prayer rang throughout the city, announcing the sunset and—more importantly—the end of the day’s fasting. Walking back through the labyrinthine streets of the Medina, Rabat’s old city, the only people outside are men walking home from the Mosque and the poor street venders somberly eating their modest break fast meal. Voices can be heard from inside the houses, voices of people enjoying what must be a satisfying meal. I can barely go ten minutes without drinking in this heat. They’ve been fasting for more than 15 hours.

The cafés we walk past, which have been closed all day, are now filled with people eating and talking excitedly. Hassan II Street, where our hotel is located, is void of any cars. It’s as if the city is hibernating.

But in less than 2 hours, after the Muezzin calls the last prayer of the day, the streets will fill again. Hassan II will be overflowing with honking cars, scurrying people and savvy vendors, selling everything from books to orange juice to fake Adidas track jackets.

And that song. That obnoxious song, featured below, which blasts from hidden speakers across the street, seemingly directly into my hotel room window. From what I can tell, it only consists of 4 or 5 lines. And they play on repeat. Over and over and over again. Listen for yourself:

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I can barely count the number of things that we’ve been told during our orientation to Morocco this week that apparently happen here only during Ramadan: shopkeepers are more tempered and less likely to bargain, young men on edge while fasting go looking for fights, men don’t smoke during the day, people pray 5 times a day, nobody drinks alcohol, bars are closed, men are less likely to harass women in the street, people in Rabat go out after 9pm…the list goes on. I can only hope that this song is on the list too. That in a 10 days or so, when Ramadan ends and life returns to normal (what that means in Rabat, I have no idea), I no longer have to use my iPod to avoid the torture.

Actually, after tonight it won’t matter. Tomorrow afternoon I move in with a Moroccan host family, away from the repetitive song and into those labyrinthine Medina streets which, now so strange, will soon be familiar. Tomorrow night I’ll enjoy my first real Moroccan break fast, I’ll see Ramadan not from an outsiders eyes, but through the eyes of my new adopted family.

It seems fitting that this blog is starting with Ramadan, which is exactly where my blog for The 195 ended last summer. It may be an unusual period of time, where nothing goes on like normal, where people’s attitudes and actions all change, where songs play unceasingly on repeat. But I don’t have a problem with that. Because I’m also in a period of time where nothing is normal, where my actions and attitudes have changed. And I think it will give me some context through which to experience regular daily life here. If I know what it’s like during Ramadan, then I might be able to better understand when Ramadan ends next week and life returns to normal. It won’t yet be my normal. But it will be Moroccan normal. And I look forward to the day when that is normal for me too.