Iftar

On August 12th, Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, began. Like most Americans I have always vaguely thought of Ramadan as that really long holiday Muslims celebrate by not eating. And that part is sort of true. People wake up at 3am to eat and pray before the sun rises and then not a drop of water or food is supposed to be consumed until sunset at 6:30pm when a siren can be heard across the city signaling time has come to break the fast. That fast-breaking meal is called Iftar.

Experiencing Ramadan in a country where most people are observing it in some way is entirely different than knowing one kid in high school who skips lunch for a month at the beginning of every year. The holiday affects everything around you. Most restaurants are closed. No eating is allowed in the streets (except by the few who duck into tiny stalls enveloped by black curtains. I try not to laugh as I pass by and see men's feet sticking out from underneath as they sip tea in these "Ramadan-free zones"). People are tired and cranky and eye your water bottle with considerable envy. One of the faculty members, Ibrahim, told me that the month is meant to make Muslims think of others who have less than themselves but that often many people just gorge the whole evening and end up eating more than usual. Thanksgiving immediately popped into my head.

Some volunteers and I were in the grocery store around 6:30 one evening and as we perused shelves all the employees gathered in groups on the floor. They sat on cardboard boxes, men with men, women with women, around plates of traditional Iftar food-- mostly fried and sweet goodies and of course dates, the fruit you are supposed to eat first when breaking the fast.

The situation was initially extraordinarily awkward as the prayer was broadcast throughout the store. Calynn, Julia, Trishna and I were the only customers there, hovering in the cereal aisle not sure what to do. I felt like an intruder on some sacred ritual I knew nothing about. But then one of the men insisted we have some of the meal and offered up dates and crackers and sweets and we understood-- Iftar food is for sharing. No one breaks the fast alone.

After my impromptu celebration in Agora, I was talking to my friend Rifat, a staff member at AUW, about it and she invited me to Iftar at her family's house. I was both touched and excited. Even after almost two months in Bangladesh, much of my time has been confined to the University and work. I looked forward to Saturday all week. We rode in a rickshaw to her fairly large and lovely apartment where I met her mother, father, husband, son, sister, and her niece and nephew.

The feast was already on the table when I arrived. Rifat's mother, a shy round faced woman had prepared it all. Rice pudding with bananas, fried vegetables, chickpeas in curry, papaya with raisins, sugar, and milk, coconut squares, lentils, lassi, dates, cucumber and carrot salad. Everyone welcomed me and we gathered around the table, drawn by the fantastic smells of the food.





All the women including me covered our heads with our ornas (the scarf most Bengali women wear around their shoulders and chest). The men wore beautifully embroidered white shirts and caps that beamed from their warm brown skin. Upstairs I could hear the cartoons that Rifat's son Shyan and his cousins were watching, an amusing aside coupled next to a tradition over 1500 years old.

As the call came over the radio, a brief prayer was muttered and then we dug in. Everyone ate quickly and with purpose—there was little talking. Rifat heaped food onto my plate and made sure I tried every single dish. Each one was delicious.

After eating, each person left to pray and then one by one returned to the table. It was then I got to know her family a little better. Her father was soft-spoken and gentle, conversing in the English of an educated man. Her husband Rony, a law professor who works in Dhaka, was both handsome and kind. Her sister, a doctor, did not share the natural gentleness of Rifat or her father—but her sharp directness often betrayed someone who laughed often and easily.

(Rifat and Shyan)

(cousins)

(Rifat and her husband Rony)

(Rifat's sister and mother)

As I continued to help myself to dates, and watched the undiminished joy on the faces of those around me I grasped that you don't have to be Muslim to appreciate the beauty of ritual and tradition, to admire the discipline bound with the celebration of release and achievement. Just like you don't have to belong to a family in order to recognize kinship.

Later Rifat and I sat underneath the laundry line on her rooftop, a sanctuary of space I know she cherishes. We could see all of Chittagong as the sun dipped and the last call to prayer echoed from different mosques across the city. We watched Shyan run around the same small square of roof his mother played on as a child. She pointed to an enormous tree eclipsing the tall buildings nearby saying she remembered this tree from the time she was ten. It struck me then how different our lives are. She's a married Bengali woman with a little boy in kindergarten living by the constancy of landmarks that have always been and will always be there. I am in my mid-twenties, on my own, and my scenery seems to never stop changing. Yet in her company I often feel like I am talking to a very old friend.




Some of the best days I can remember involve moments just like that. Moments where I find a piece of the familiar cocooned in the foreign unknown. Eating Herero bread baked in the ground with Tjizakuje’s incandescent smile. The sunrise May Day celebration in Oxford, voices piercing the barely lit sky, Spring suddenly there. And Iftar at Rifat’s.