Published in New Age Eid Special, 2005. Reprinted in Writing Across Borders (Ed. Niaz Zaman, Pub. writers.ink, Dhaka), 2009.

On other days, this was a time of comfort. The land of sleep could be reached borne on the melody of the azan, the cool breeze of dawn. Like a firework flying silent through the sky, without limits or connections – father winged his way to a higher plane. At that moment, a sudden gust of wind that shakes the crop fields moved around and raged inside the long-cloth long shirt of Sabbir Hossain. The Mowlana thought, this is a machination of the devil; Satan has sent his agent to wreck the azan. Still, in the past five years, the Mowlana’s svelte voice had turned into a baritone, about a dozen goat-like beard hairs had crawled out from the soft-tender chin, but not a single note of the tune nor a word of the text of the azan would be distorted.