Goal Posts

This morning I woke up on the balcony where we've been sleeping, I think it was the cat that woke me up, prodding my face, kneadning it with a little paw, but I actually can't remember if that was today or yesterday. Either way I woke up and the first call to prayer for the day was drifting through the chalky-pastel morning sky. It wasn't close or even broken by static because it's so loud that way I've heard it elsewhere, rather, it was indistinct, like it actually had to be listened for, as if only those listening for it, that is to say the pious , could have heard it. As it was dawn, and I've been feeling near-narcoleptic lately I fell asleep again shortly after it was finished.
I woke up again about 3 hours later to Elliot's alarm and the humid rays of the Caspian-saturated sun. It took a while to get moving, really because we didn't really have to be. There is nothing like a schedule or timetable for the ferry to Turkmenbashi. One simply shows up and hopes for the best. Today we did not get the best, or even the decent, but, it can only be hoped that tomorrow the port authority will decide some things need to be sent to Turkmenistan.
While we waited, after hauling our 30 lbs. packs across downtown Baku, Elliot and I alternately read and dozed in a nearby cafe, where the propritors have been incredibly kind, offering sweets with tea and not allowing us to pay for anything, even though we've now been there two days in a row, sweating all over their chairs and drooling on their tables. Today we decided to totally wear out our welcome by asking if they'd mind keeping our masochistically large packs in a closet or something. Somehow these people agreed to this bizarre request and now our load is greatly lightened as we spend another night in Baku, walking through the large, built-up, public consumption avenues and the narrow, dust-choked IDP alleys that snake between them, where kids play football between two homes 20 feet apart from each other and little girls will follow you down the street, unable to believe that you don't speak Azeri, but enraptured by the fact that you know your way around the English language to respond that you are feeling well and thank her for being so considerate to ask.
Tomorrow I will read in the sun without concentrating, drink more tea and watch the swaet salt dry on Elliot's shirt while we sit there, waiting for a boat and musing on the other side of the Caspian.