Sunset sounds

I was sitting on the roof of the house just before sundown. The roof area in our case is used to house the satellite tv dishes (yes, four of them), the central aircon units, and the water tanks. The real reason for me sitting on the roof was to try to make sense of what the pucking flumber had done to the water tanks. One of them had sprung a leak, and he had confidently (and wrongly) assured me that he could fix it by melting some plastic cover to the outside of the leak.

The imam's started their call to prayer, and I looked up. A dozen mosques surround the house, and the sounds intermingled with that of the last remnants of traffic - everyone was headed home for supper. Dusk was settling on the town, and I suddenly realized that the worst of the summer heat had dissipated. Haydn's Sonata came floating up the stairwell from where my teenage daughter was practising her music.

At moments like this you discover again that in spite of all the hardships and stress that go with living in a foreign country - life isn't too bad either.