Fajr فجر is the Dawn, the hopeful time after a long night when light returns, heralding the sunrise. It carries a symbolic value to all cultures, many of which personify it as a deity (to the Phoenicians it was the god Shahar, twin of the dusk Shalim). In Islam, of course, it is the name of a Sura and of the first prayer of day, before sunrise.
The dawn is a fitting concept to begin the year with, especially with the light returning after the solstice, but the idea came to me when, at a time of deep personal darkness, I started seeing the possibility of light sparking from it again. The root FJR also gave us the Arabic word infijar, “explosion”, and that’s how I envisioned it, a forceful and dynamic rebirth from the depths of gloom.
