like a sore thumb

Last night around 8 o'clock the music started.

We have a large dirt patch behind our apartment building, the size of a soccer field or so, where cars drive around in circles, children kick around soccer balls, and people throw their garbage once the mountain around the actual trash bins has become unreasonable. Not the most festive of places in my mind.

Apparently not so in the mind of my neighbors.

As the music begins to blast, I run out to our balcony and find that a part of the dirt patch has been transformed into an impromptu dance floor, complete with plastic rugs and chairs all around. First guess, this must be a wedding! Soon we'll hear the honking parade of cars arriving and then we'll go down and join in the dancing. The guests begin to arrive and this plan of inconspicuous party crashing goes out the window. All the attendees are males. Teenage boys.

Hmmm.

I watch from a distance as the dancing begins in earnest, All of the boys dancing, holding hands, dancing with each other, which is utterly and completely normal here. I try to imagine this happening in a club in the US. Doubtful.

The call to prayer begins at our neighborhood mosque and the music is turned off momentarily as people continue to mingle and eat the piles of food that have been unloaded from a moving van. Not a second after the loudspeakers of the mosque are shut off, the music begins to blast and the dancing continues.

And the fireworks begin -- Exams! These fireworks are for passing the highschool exam. Funny how my brain cells have already begun to make connections like this.

The music continues late into the night and becomes background music for my dreams.