A Belated Eid Mubarak

Ramadan is Khalas (finished).



It's long overdue for me to get down my thoughts on Ramadan and how it went. I managed to fast for every single day during Ramadan without respite and I'm clearly proud of that, although I must say that sleeping til 4pm on weekends made some of the easiest fasting days ever! (Particularly when compared to some of my more religious friends that got up and prayed during prayer times while I snoozed, feel bad about that one, hehe)

So reflecting on whether I hit my goals for Ramadan and what I learnt, here is what Ramadan is about for me:

- Ramadan is about supporting each other, asking about each other's health and fasting process. It's about a community that shifts as one, to a new schedule, a new outlook on life, a new thought process.

- Ramadan is about thinking about the poor and the needy, remembering how they feel not being able to eat during the day, not having ready access to water. Although we drive expensive cars, have huge dinners after sundown with food they can only dream of, maintain our luxurious lifestyles and all the other contradictions, somehow Ramadan at least gives us that window of opportunity from sun-up to sun-down, to remember those people every time our stomach growls or our parched throat hurts.

- Ramadan is about being able to adjust your earthly lifestyle to something different, more important, more spiritual, more conscientious. The spiritual aspect is about sharing with other people, discussions on how things work and the importance of things. It's about conversations with yourself and what you hold as important, what your philosophical outlook on life is, etc.

- Ramadan is about big communal futoors (meal to break the fast at sundown) and ghabges (big buffet at around 11, as a second meal, usually with lashings of rice and fish).

- Ramadan is about keeping your ear finely tuned to that iftar call from the mosque and about keeping the Ramadan calendar on your desktop so you know exactly how much longer you have to fast today and how much longer you have to eat and drink until the first call to prayer.

- Ramadan is about that suhoor with a friend, fuul and hummous and conversations about life at 2-3am (Thanks to Simi, my suhoor buddy for fuul, shisha, life and anything in between :))

- Ramadan is about burgers and shawarmas when you need to a quick feed, omlettes (which you can smell cooking but cannot taste) when you wanna conserve cash and eat at home, big grocery shops with housemates when you're salivating in Jazira supermarket at all of the options

- Ramadan is about the best home-made meals ever at your friend's houses, or when they bring food for you, Bahraini food, Sudanese food, Egyptian food, Bedouin food, any kind of damn food you can get your hands on as long as it's dutifully prepared by a friend, friend's mother, friend's maid, etc. (Thank you so much to Slais, Hamdi, Ali Shaikh and Mariam Kamal for making sure I was well fed and not lonely at iftar).

- Ramadan is about the best smokes and glasses of juice ever, the first smoke and glass of juice after your first meal, thinking about contentedness and the night ahead and the last smoke and glass of juice on our wondrous balcony, gazing out over the street, thinking about ramadan, life, sleep and everything else... and sharing that as a conversation with a friend, roomie and teammate (thanks Jorien!)

- Ramadan is about conversations with your Chinese friend/roommate/intern about Arab culture and life. (Thanks Dingkun!)

- Ramadan is about sleep-working through your day, trying to motivate yourself to get something done while you are tempted by random chats and scrabulous, and sharing that with someone who knows all too well what it's like (Thanks Saba!), while you are tempted by random conversations that flicker and flow from the nothing to the something, but all totally meaningful

- Ramadan is about sharing an office with someone who has experienced the ups + downs of Ramadan for many many years and is part of the very culture you speak of, observing their habits and learning to understand them and to respect them. (Thanks Sahar!)

- Ramadan is about answering questions "Why are you fasting?", "Are you converting to Islam?", "What's Ramadan really like?" and all the questions about Islam and Arab culture that stem from that. Too many people to mention here but I'm sure y'all know who you are, particularly anyone who I said "Read my blog!" to... sorry about that, should've come up with a more personalised reply :P

- Ramadan is about a schedule... about filling yourself to the brim with futoor (not healthy, i Know) but looking forward to that first coffee (best coffee ever) at your favourite places (thanks Veranda, Costa (Adliya + Juffair) and Cinnzeo... and all their staff!) and that conversation you've been needing so badly, about seeing someone's smile on webcam and it making your day.

- Ramadan is about late night msn and google talk chats, whiling away the time towards the end of suhoor, something about those late night chats has a special feeling about them, even if they are totally random or hardcore philosophical/political...

not ur regular online chat (Thanks to Fatima, Annika, Sara, Saaim, Dalia, Shahira and anyone I forgot... sorry!)

- Ramadan is about reading the ramadan blog on nomadlife and being happy whenever there's a posting so you can share and understand other people's thoughts on the Holy month from whatever background or country they come from/are in (too bad it was not very active this year, gotta lift it for next year guys!)

- Most importantly, Ramadan is about connecting with an incredible culture, a rich history, a psyche, a religion, a global community and a lifestyle that are so finely intertwined it is difficult to separate them almost any of the time. I can't pretend I've gone anywhere close to really understanding Arabs, Islam or the Middle Eastern region properly but I can definitely say Ramadan has helped me a great deal to make headway.

Kol3am wa entum bheir!

Can’t believe it’s passed. The lonely salmon that constituted my long-awaited breakfast today made me think about the religion, the world and me in it. Last night was the first night of Eid, and the last night of Ramadan month.

I had to see the sunrise yesterday! I’ve seen so many of it in the past weeks, but yesterday’s one was special. Not only because it was the last one in the long row of sleepless nights over the past month. It was the last sunrise for which I was woken up to by a friend, first sunrise when I did not have suhoor, the first sunrise, when you could forget about the clock, the urge to stuff yourself with food and water.

And I was insanely happy. I’m not a holiday person. Often the special marked days in the calendar do not make my head twirl with excitement, but yesterday, when sitting on the porch, drinking fresh juice and enjoying the sight of the sky turning from dark colorless, to grey-blue shades, I was so childlishly happy. I felt the holiday.

I loved Ramadan. It’s been tough, and there were days I was talking myself into quitting it all, but it gives me a crazy feeling of pleasure and satisfaction to know that I managed it!

I did it. I fasted. Together with my Muslim friends. I started on the day 3 of Ramadan, aiming to try for a week, and on day 4 I already knew that I had to go on until the end. Some decisions in life do not come well planned or thought through. Some choices are made in an instance, in an impulse, that can hardly be explained. When leaning against the door in Mohammad’s kitchen, and listening to my Muslim friends sharing the reasons for fasting, it hit me right there – I need to do it. Exactly, not only want to do it, but I actually felt the urge, the inner need to spend this month fasting, testing my limits, and thinking about bigger picture.

The beauty of Ramadan for me came in few precious moments.

The conversation I had with my team mates that started off the whole fasting journey for me

The minute when I told my Muslim friend that I am fasting, and the excitement and support I felt from him

The suhoor – 4:30 am breakfast – that I shared with Saba, my Pakistani friend, who cooked the food, dragged me out of the bed, and made sure I drink enough water

The invitations to the families of my friends where I could have a family iftar or, even better, suhoor

This one day when I felt helpless, worn out, weak, and so willing to break the fast; the messages I received that day from my beloved friends, for their inspiration, kind words and belief in my indurance

Those evening moments when you have the food lined up in front of you on the table, impatiently waiting with dates in your hand, and your body focused on the second when ‘adan’ or call for prayer let you graciously thank to God for one more day of fasting and have the first sip of the most delicious water

The feeling of community, belonging and bigger cause, with all those who fasted and broke the fast together with me

The nights that I spent staying up, cruising in Amman, singing on the hill top, taking pictures with my friends, watching movies and smoking arguilah

The longing for tea, water, fruits, and restraining from it, and realizing that I CAN, I HAVE the will power to tackle the toughest days of my life, knowing that once I already spent almost 30 productive, full of work & stress days fasting, and still reaching my goals.

Ramadan for me became the month of re-discovering the splendor of community and friendship, the month of I Choose, and I Can, the month of setting free.

How to behave during RAMADAN!!

Hear no evil!

This is all what I can say about it!

One has to stop chatting and talking evil things!

Ramadan learnings..

One of my biggest learnings this Ramadan: the art of patience.

Since this is my first Ramadan living abroad - I feel Ramadan has been trying in not being able to voice a large part of the frustrations of not being able to comprehend the language completely, or just being exhausted from the 180 degree turn my schedule has taken because of Ramadan timings and not being able to function during the day. Today was one such day - and while I searched for any excuse to be able to break my fast and just yell out or curse or run home and drink a gallon of Diet Coke, simultaneously asking my Dad online whether anger was an excuse to break a fast..I realized this was what I have truly grasped from Ramadan. The art of patience.

:)

Tax free shopping

A few days ago, I discovered that this is a month when I can shop extensively. Its said that Allah doesnt ask for any tax for whatever I buy. Allah allows us to buy only 4 pairs of clothes in a year . So, its time for shopping in next days.

All I'm looking forward to, is lot of hunting for those 'different' things for myself. As it is, I'm a shopoholic as all women are....
So, cheers (just) to shopping.....!!!

A different kind of Ramadan

Tomorrow at sundown, about 1.4 billion people around the world will count down the seconds until feasting on the tasty relief of iftar/buka puasa. As the sun dips below the horizon, 14 million other people will begin a 24 hour period of fasting, prayer, introspection, and pseudo-luddism as cars, TV, electricity and everything else is haram. Yom Kippur is kind of like the Jewish Ramadan except with one hundredth of the people observing for one thirtieth of the time. I’m sure there are a lot of Jews and a lot of Muslims who would take issue with that last statement, for a wide variety of reasons, but they’re all wrong. The holidays are both of the somber/introspective sort with the goal of spiritual cleansing and abstaining from all that is bad. The origin of Yom Kippur comes from the day Moses descended from Mt. Sinai (by the way, if you find yourself in Dahab and someone in your group tries to convince you to do the Mt. Sinai sunrise hike, the answer should be no. Just chill on your pile of cushions, light up a shisha and maximize your Dahab time. Seriously.) to see the Israelites praying to a darn golden calf. To make up for this honest mistake the Israelites spent the day repenting and made it an annual thing.

I’m writing from the windswept Sonoran desert in the city of Tucson (no AIESEC here :-( ) in the southwestern corner of the US, about 60 miles from Nogales, Mexico. Not exactly Mecca, I know, but here I’m running a youth program involving recently arrived refugee high school students. Most of my students are Somali Bantu, Iraqi or Sudanese and most of them are Muslims celebrating their first Ramadan in the US. So far, Ramadan’s been rough on the students. Imagine trying to explain why the plural of ‘life’ is not ‘lifes’ to a group of homesick and highly hormonal high schoolers with parched mouths and grumbling stomachs. And imagine that the majority of your students (the Somali Bantu) have grown up without a written language. All of these students live in the same few apartment complexes around Tucson so I hope to stop by and take up one of their iftar invitations sometime next week.

Simultaneously I am doing the whole Yom Kippur thing, cause I’m a somewhat observant Jew and all. But this is Blogging Ramadan, not Blogging Yom Kippur (which would be a complete failure as computers are off-limits), so I'll do my best to stay on topic. Expect updates later with more perspectives of Ramadan as a refugee in America and then my perspective as a Yom Kippur-celebrating Jewish-American running a predominantly Muslim youth program during the month of Ramadan. Whew… Ramadan Kareem and L’Shanah Tovah to everyone reading!

Coca-Cola - Proud Sponsor of the Holy Month

Running late for meeting a friend for Iftar, I jumped in a cab as the call to prayer was starting. A little way down the road, we slowed down next to two young men in red shirts, standing next to some decent-sized red sacks. They produce two red pouches from their bag and hand one to the cab driver and one to me.


A bottle of Dasani drinking water and a handful of figs, perfect for the taxi driver on the go. Interesting bit of sponsorship from Coke during Ramadan...

Experience of second Ramadan

'So why do you fast?', I asked my team mates few days ago, as they were preparing for their second iftar - the team one. 'Well...it's just so much more than not eating or not drinking..it is more of being a better person...more of spiritual experience...more of unity with each other and the whole Muslim world', both of them were mentioning almost identical things.

Last year I fasted one day. Last year I had Ramadan when all of our Jordanian MC were foreigners, we have not had members, and I barely knew maybe 2-3 people who were fasting.

This year I'm surrounded by almost 70 members, and I am the only foreigner in my MC team who is not fasting. Or was not.

After this long and exciting conversation with my team in the kitchen over iftar preparation, I decided to fully engage in the Ramadan experience this year: partially because I want to be a better person, and I find Ramadan as a perfect opportunity for me to work on the weaknesses I so want to get rid of; partially because I want to have the experience that the whole country is having, the experience that seems to be so empowering only once you are actually in it.

So far - it's been more than I was asking for!

Yesterday I septn my iftar with a family member and since I stayed over night there, I had my suhoor with them and it was a totally incredible experience with having the whole family waking up at 4 am, sitting around the kitchen, talking, joking around and eating - I've never enjoyed my food that much as today at 4 am.

Feeling of unity with my team, with my members, understanding EXACTLY what they are going through; sitting with them at the Hashem's tables and waiting for that 6: 57 pm to happen; getting a call from a team mate so excited that I am fasting and so anxious to break fast together with me!

Incredible experience, joyful and fulfilling. I am so happy I decided to go through it

Ramadan Kareem from Jordan!