Syed’s Reviews > The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos > Status Update

"Each inscription ended with the same two melodious words, at which, each time he uttered them, the hodja’s voice reverently fell. There issomething haunting, almost Hawaian, about the airy vowels. I only learnt years later, what they mean: it is ‘murmur a fàtiha’. The fàtiha is the first sura of the Koran: ‘Glory be to Allah, the lord of all the worlds.’"