Ramadan

I was invited to stay for Ramadan. I’m not sure that’s exactly what happened so much as it was just clear that I would be staying because why wouldn’t I be? Last year, I left just before and the sisters were sad I was missing it and said, “Next year, inchallah.” It is the special holy month where all rhythms change as a way to draw you more into yourself and your connection with God. During Ramadan no food or water passes your lips from dawn to sunset; you’re meant to be more conscious of and not taking part in lying, gossiping, anger, etc.; there is more giving to the community; and a general increase in reflection and spiritual connection. It was an interesting time that I loved and hated all at the same time, possibly in shifting equal measure. It was an experience that was difficult in the moment, but in the end, I look back on it as an immensely beautiful time. Anyone I met during this month was quite happy to hear I was fasting too. It made me feel like I was really here and actually a part of things.

The week before, we spent many afternoons baking cookies with the neighbor over to help. Shortbread like cookies, made in the oven on the roof. A metal box attached to a propane tank. K sitting on a tiny stool in front of it, trays of cookies on the floor. Opening the door to check and turn and take out when they were ready. The cookies were then dipped into a variety of things, mostly chocolate and then dipped into smashed up wafer cookies or crushed peanuts or coconut shavings. Tubs and tubs carefully arranged and ready.

I was not really worried about fasting…I’m very good at not eating. There was a time in my life I loved cooking, hosting dinner parties, cooking for 30 people at a time, planning meals for the week. But that phase is either over or on pause, it’s unclear. When no one is reminding me it is time to eat, I am usually too immersed in what I’m doing to notice until I feel awful and realize I haven’t eaten. So, fasting but knowing Iftar (the meal that breaks the fast at sunset) was coming, and it would be a smorgasbord filling the entire table with incredible food made the hunger easier. I asked N what she loves about Ramadan and she said she loves everyone coming around the table to eat and be together. This happens everyday already, multiple times a day, so I was curious to see how it would be different.

The day begins with Suhoor…breakfast just before dawn. Everyone crawls out of bed about 4:30 and gathers groggily around the table, in pajamas and messy hair. It feels like an initiation, a shared quiet thing. Dates, yogurt to dip dates, milk, harira (typical soup), bread, leftovers from yesterday’s Iftar and obviously atay (tea). Everyone eats their fill, no one really talking, staring ahead, fueling against the long, hungry day. One by one as everyone finishes, they shuffle back to bed. Mama oversees this meal. She is awake before everyone, prepares everything, sets the table, and wakes the stragglers. She, K, and I clean before we go back to bed.

The rhythm in the house seems to be sleeping through as much of the day as possible. But after being awake at 4:30am eating and drinking caffeinated tea, this feels now like an impossibility for me. The sun is awake. The house sleeps. The shutters closed. Moroccan houses can become amazingly dark. Shutters to keep out the extreme summer heat, and the sun and wind that are all year. It is possible not to know it is day at all. Baba (dad) goes to mosque for each call to prayer. Mama and sisters pray on a mat rolled out in a salon. But mostly, the house is quiet, dark and sleeping. Around 4pm, the women gather in the kitchen and start preparing the food for Iftar. Pizza, stuffed bread (Berber pizza), cigars (like egg rolls but with savory Moroccan meat/potato stuffing), quiche, harira. I try to take the toddler to play so she’s not underfoot. We stand on the balcony and shout to the birds and the bikes and the sky and then laugh and put our fingers to our lips and whisper, “shhh!!” There is a gentle urgency in the street…visits to the hanout for last minute things, heading to home in time, shouts to friends along the way. You can feel the collective energy gathering, the sun setting, the air charged. The table being set. Glasses of milk and bowls of harira set for everyone. Piles of dates, plates of yogurt, pizza piled high, chebakia (the amazing deep fried spiced pastry soaked in honey and sesame seeds) and other pastry delights. One night, mama grabbed a mash of brown goo and put it in my fingers, hot. Smashed, rosemary dates. She watched my face break open in delight; she smiled and moved the plate closer to me. Every daily meal it’s usually a crush to eat, everyone at the same time out of the center platter. M described eating with Moroccans like a pack of lions and if you’re too slow, as I am, you might not get enough. But this is different, it’s relaxed. This is everyone gathered together around the table, breaking their fast, re-entering a communal space, waking. It is different and now I know what N was saying. It feels like a quiet celebration. And we’re inside it together.

After Iftar, there is tea and everyone stays for tea. Baba leaves for mosque first and then so do Mama and N. They get dressed up and look so beautiful, light blue and white. Depending on the day, I stay with K and the toddler, and we watch Turkish soaps dubbed into Darija and drink more tea and snack. Or I go for coffee with M and friends. A primarily male activity. We have a regular coffee spot….there is a closed fossil shop next door, their patio hidden behind work trucks. The 4 Ms would go into the coffee, grab tables, chairs and our coffee and always a pot of tea and set it up on this next-door patio that is elevated and watching the whole street, but hidden from the view of everyone at the coffee shop. At first, I was a little offended to not be allowed to sit in the coffee shop patio. I’m not sure that is the correct word…because if I really wanted to, we would have, but it’s a gentle balance of comfort…for me and for the men in their space. Not Ramadan time, I’m always in the coffee shops. But we had this routine and whoever arrived first set up our spot and always we five. Sometimes people would come and go…they knew where to find us…but we were protected from the people coming to say “hi” with the actual motivation of gawking at me. We played gin rummy for hours and hours. Until we got too cold or it was time for dinner. Some nights we ran errands, driving into the desert to deliver packages, going all over town to try to fix my sewing machine, going a town over for a break in the routine…..always this group.

I asked K what her favorite part of Ramadan is and she said, “the way time moves, and we always know what is happening and where everyone is going to be.” There was a rhythm to the days, and it was the same everyday. This is what I struggled with, everyday the same. Every day quiet, dark house, people in their own separate worlds. So, I started running. And running. In windstorms, in rainstorms, in days of surprising summer like heat. Mostly it was deserted and just past town I had the world to myself with fields, mountains, palm trees, and sky that goes on forever.

Dinner was when everyone arrived back at home which tended to be around midnight. Potatoes, peas and chicken eaten with bread. I am always always the first to tap out and say Bon Nuit and go to bed. I think they all lingered on together for another hour. I was always so full and then we wake up in 3 hours to eat breakfast!

The last day was the last day all of a sudden. There was an announcement on the tv that the moon had been sighted, and it was over. It felt like we were let loose all of a sudden. A drop. We were in this thing together, going through it in unison, in a rhythm, as a communal experience. Partly, I was dying for it to end so there would be people out in the sunshine, we would sleep in normal nighttime hours, make noise in the house, shops open again. Hearing it was over, I felt scrambled, like wait no it can’t just be over like that I am not ready. And I understood K’s feeling of time, of knowing where we were going to be at what time and that everyone would be there together without question. We were held inside a rhythm, and without it, I felt unmoored. K and I sat there with tea, everyone else gone to mosque, being a little lost.

After mosque, K texts me (this is how we communicate without a common language) that she and N are going to buy rocks. I’m sure this is not what is happening, but I ask if I can come too and of course, I am welcome. There are thousands of people out and about…the souks are full, as are restaurants, coffee shops, barbers, the streets, food stands. People everywhere. I don’t know how cars are moving down the street. We go up an impossibly tiny narrow staircase to a beauty salon, but they’re full. We go to the souk for tea and almonds and make our way to another beauty salon. This one has time for N to get a blow out and we sit and eat cookies and watch her beautiful long hair get styled.

Before bed, I ask what happens now. They tell me, “Tomorrow is a normal day.” Ok. “We wake up and back to normal.” Weird but ok. This is not true. The day after Ramadan is Eid al-Fitr, where everyone gets dressed up in new outfits, full make up, nails done…hence the blow out… and everyone goes visiting. I have been told this is a normal day, so up I come in normal clothes, no makeup and everyone is decked out at 9am like it’s a party day. Because it is! I sneak back down after a guest leaves and change and get made up too. The green salon is open, and this is where everyone gathers. There is a salon downstairs where I have been working. It has been prepared for guests, but this is where you bring people you don’t know very well. Today, everyone goes to the upstairs salon. I love this room. The walls are grey and shimmery; all the cushions are various shades of emerald-green; velvet and satin and stitching and cording. White lace curtains with the breeze coming in. It’s used for hosting guests and special occasions. I have been wondering where the cookies are that we spent a week making. They are here in the salon, arranged in rows on a gold platter. Gold tea service with sparkly colored glasses. And visitors coming and going….and I know them. I know all the visitors! Then we have lunch and it’s over.

For a month everything had a place and a time, a rhythm we were all moving through together, without needing to ask where anyone would be. I grew accustomed to it, the gathering, the quiet, the certainty of it. I belonged inside something that I didn’t fully understand but was held by all the same. When it ended, it didn’t feel like a return to normal so much as a loosening. Like something that had been gently carrying us set us back down.

I didn’t fully understand the religious depth of it, that always still felt out of my reach…but I have an understanding now of something else. The power of moving together. Of a whole community sharing the same moments, the same pauses, the same return. It was a month that felt like ten, that then disappeared all at once. Now the streets are loud again in the sunshine, the days stretch open and everything moves forward. And I move with it, but I’m no longer quite the same.