E walked in the bedroom this morning, where I was still half-asleep.

"Was that an airplane?" I asked. E busted out laughing. There was, indeed, an airplane flying overhead this morning. We have never heard an airplane here, except, of course, at the airport, some kilometers outside of town. We were both totally disoriented by the sound, transported for a moment back to our first apartment in Adams Morgan, on the edge of Rock Creek Park, not far from the flight path of I-refuse-to-call-it-Reagan National Airport.

Sheep baaing, donkeys braying, often; muezzins calling Muslims to prayer, every few hours; a couple times a year, griots hollering and singing the praises of our well-born neighbors and their families; sometimes even the melancholy wail of the passenger train on its westward route to Dakar. But an airplane? Never.