musings on ramzan
Ramzan Mubarak everyone!
Last week I went over to my friend (& brilliant writer!) Safia Elhillo’s for Iftar. Safia and I live a few train stops away from each other & so we’re constantly at each others’ apartments & it is truly one of the greatest gifts that I could ask for. When she first moved and that happened, I was recently vaccinated & beginning to come out of my cocoon of quarantine. I went to her spot & halfway through our conversation, she sensed all the bullshit I wasn’t saying, looked at me clearly and asked a question that got at the heart of everything I hadn’t been saying to myself for months. I broke open & started to cry, and then we had a cry session together (lol).
As for so many of us, going for so many months without seeing friends and loved ones really taught me how desperately we need each other. How the facetimes, the zooms, the phone calls, the texts—how deeply not enough they were, and how much we were coping with during lockdown. And how much of that had built up in us, how much we were carrying. And frankly—as there is still very much a pandemic going on—still are carrying around being so isolated from each other. And just how even with all our technological replacements, there’s nothing like being able to be right in front of someone, to smell them, to hear them, to touch them, and to be able to notice the subtle things in their body that tell you they’re hiding pain, hurt, sadness, fear—the things they might not tell you on a phone call, even the things they might not tell themselves—but what becomes to plain and clear when you’re in the eyes of someone you can see with trusted love.
Last week she had invited a few friends over for Iftar. We cooked together and talked late into the night and it was just so beautiful. After having such an isolated two years of Ramzan, being able to gather in this small way—of cooking Iftar together, felt like such a miracle. I went home that night thinking about how much I loved my friends, how grateful I felt to be able to be amongst them, to hear them grow and talk about what was moving their hearts, and to literally be able to eat together.
At the end of the month I am going to a work-related retreat. It’ll still be during Ramzan and because I am a bish who grew up in the west, I am very used to people ignoring Ramzan when it happens, and just the small things that make Ramzan hard when no one else around you notices that it’s Ramzan. This isn’t a thing I fault people for—I just think that most non-Muslims don’t have a reference point for what the month entails or often basic knowledge of when it happens, so it becomes a ‘oh that’s nice’ kind of mentality and then a forgetting of it, versus actually taking the time, space, and care to nurture people who observe during this time.
My friend, Nate Marshall, asked what I needed for the retreat since it was during Ramzan. I was surprised by how surprised I was by the question—the thoughtfulness, the care, the want to love me in a way that supported my spiritual nourishment. And I was even more surprised by realizing that it was the first time I can recall in my life that someone asked me that for a work-related thing, and how I had no answer. What did I need for my Ramzan to be made easier? Usually, I barrel through Ramzan. I, unfortunately, ignore my body & its call too often. This is something that I am trying to get better at, but is & has taken me a long time.
I also think about how I learned the ways to ignore my body & its needs through so many ways. In high school I used to play sports when fasting—I would run two miles to practice every day after a long day of school and be there until practice was over & go home after for Iftar. Sometimes, me and my friend Najma would walk part of the two-mile run and talk about Islam and being young & Muslim. I loved those moments, walking along the Charles River, the trees in bloom, Najma and I talking about Allah.
During Iftar at Safia’s we talked about how both Safia and I would play sports when we were fasting. I’m realizing now that too is perhaps also where part of me learned to stop voicing my body’s needs, by occupying some of the dissonance between my Muslim world & the western one. By knowing that people wouldn’t really care if I was fasting, or else would judge me & my religion for doing something they perceived to be weird or unhealthy, and by the western calendars that are fixed in the Gregorian system & don’t account for the moon, the rhythms of nature, what the sky tells us about the cycles of revelation, of abstaining, of nourishment, of history.
When Nate asked me the question, I realized that I didn’t have an answer. What did I need during Ramzan? I’d trained myself to shrink that part of my need to be so small that I didn’t even have the voice to ask for it. Neglect—oh old friend, the many ways you show up in myself. I asked for something very basic like dinner times being at Iftar time and instantly everyone else was like, “yeah no, we’re gonna build in more downtime during the day and do more things in the evening.”
I know it seems like such a simple thing, but the thoughtfulness made me tear up. Again, I am so used to this part of me being ignored by people who are not Muslim aside from a handful of friends and loved ones. And those friends are incredible—Jamila Woods, my best friend, who would always make me smoothies for Sehri and try to get my lazy ass to get up and drink it in the morning or at least drink it before bed. I’m grateful, to feel so tenderly nourished by my friends and loved ones. To see them reaching out to make space for the parts of me that I’ve spent my life barreling past, or only showing to other Muslim people.
Thank you dear beloveds, for showing up for me. & for showing me how to show up for myself.
I hope everyone’s Ramzan’s are blessed & everyone receives the nourishment they need.