56. The Speaker

Beautiful voices have passed through me time and again over the last forty years. Some of them clashed, others harmonised perfectly. I have called the prayer so many times I cannot count. I have read extracts from every page of the Qu’ran at least 100 times over. Now, I’ve been abandoned for a new model that can be heard at 9 kilometres’ distance and blinks with green and white lights that can be seen as far as 30 kilometres away. Even the deaf are kept in touch.

I may not call as loudly as the 4,000 speakers they’re replacing me with, but I do still have a voice. I feel justified in getting out the important things I’ve been waiting to say, for I am a speaker after all. Now that I’m free, I can speak of all the things I saw but never told anyone about.

When the siege took place, I couldn’t call out, silenced by the gunshots, silenced by the quiet after forty men were rendered unconscious. When the many died on the bridge, I wept in prayer, but I didn’t make a peep.

They think that this removal of the old replaces hard histories with something new, but not everyone wants to forget – for the voices of the people who sang through these speakers harnessed a beauty never to be relived or retold.