The words of the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, are identical wherever it is sung, in every country where Muslims worship.
"Hayya 'alas salah" is sung around the globe five times a day, including outside a construction trailer parked in a remote lot at Philadelphia International Airport by a city taxi driver, Sylla Salif. "Hayya 'alas salah."
"Come to prayer. Come to prayer."
As Salif sang recently, men washed their hands in streams of water from spigots, as is the Muslim custom to prepare for prayer. Some wore kufis on their heads, and a few dressed in long robes, either brightly colored or white. They climbed a few steps onto a wooden deck and put their shoes on shelves just outside the doors. Then about 30 filed in and knelt.
Salif, an immigrant from Ivory Coast in West Africa, said he holds no particular position of religious authority.
"Any Muslim would know how to call for prayer," he said.
The mosque on Island Avenue is a humble monument to the efforts of cab drivers, the vast majority of them men, who sought to create a place of spiritual refuge amid the most prosaic of surroundings, a crumbling slab of asphalt where they park while waiting for fares from arriving flights.
The mosque had been threatened by the airport's plans to displace taxis from that parking lot, one of two reserved for them, on May 1. The airport planned to use the lot for its own vehicles. About 300 of the city's cab drivers rely on the airport almost exclusively for work, and losing those parking spots would have made it harder to be on the scene when potential fares arrive.
The drivers voted to authorize a strike. Airport management relented the next day. A spokesperson said the airport wouldn't move the cabs next month and would seek to accommodate the mosque in whatever parking arrangements eventually are made.
