Dear Writer,
It is that time of the year when the Muslim community comes together with the end of Ramadan, and celebrates Eid. My friend Iram invited me to lunch today. She’s a student of journalism and is a great storyteller. I asked her to enlighten me about Ramadan and Eid and she was more than happy to.
Iram calls Eid: ‘the graduation day for Muslims.’ She has spent this Ramadan alone, away from her family and friends, busy studying for her degree exam.
She hands me the sheer kurma and says, “Ramadan is a series of days where we are tested every day and at the end of it we celebrate with those who passed or failed. It is for self-assessment. It’s between us and our Rabb (Lord).”
I nod and observe Iram’s house. It is cleaner than the last time I met her. Books aren’t scattered everywhere, ‘the chair’ isn’t home to clothes that do not belong in the cupboard or the laundry basket, and her house smells like the traditional pudding she handed me. We finish our sheer kurma in silence. It was too tasty to waste any minute talking.
We head to the kitchen and she starts making what she calls kuchumbar for the biryani — it is a kind of salad with curd. I ask her, “How was your Ramadan without your family?”
She responds, “It was harder than I thought it would be.”
I wonder how could it be hard, as Iram back home lived in a joint family, and she likes being alone. She interrupts my train of thought, “I know what you are thinking. I do enjoy not being supervised or spending most of my day listening to my brothers bicker over how fasting is tough while my mother and I stand over the stove preparing food for iftaari (the time when you break the fast). But the hardest part is waking up, getting out of bed. Here the alarm or my cat’s meowing wakes me up not my mom’s voice or that guy who used to play the drums before sehri.” Sehri is the time where you wake to eat before sunrise, before you begin to fast.
“The guy who used to play the drums? I thought the azaan woke people up for sehri.”
“Yes. Azaan actually takes place after sehri. Before Sehri, the imaam tells us to wake up over the loudspeaker. But there was once this guy who would play the drums. It was the time when azaan or any kind of message on loudspeakers was banned in our area as per the court’s order. Our hearts didn’t have the kind of imaan (faith) that could wake us up without help from the masjid, so we were upset. But then, on the first day, something weird happened. We heard a voice calling out ‘Uth jao, sehri ka waqt ho gaya hai’, echoing from lane to lane, followed by the sound of drumming. (The time for sehri has come, please wake up.) You know the drums that you see being used during Holi celebrations. It sounded like that.”
I nod and wait for her to continue.
“We were surprised. It happened every day without fail. Nobody knew who it was. The people in the masjid made an announcement after three weeks, for the man to come forward so they could celebrate Eid with him. Nobody from the community came out. We couldn’t figure it out, nobody we knew owned a drum or had that voice. He was quick and sneaky by the time somebody would notice him he was already in the next lane and then the next. He was exclusive, he only played the drums where Muslims lived and for not more than 40 seconds.
“We couldn’t see his face in the dark. After a point, nobody cared to find who he was. We thought we will see him on the 27th day because it was the only night where everybody is awake. 27th days in the month of Ramadan is believed to be Laytul Qadr, a night equal to 80 years of worship.
“That was the only day we didn’t hear from him. He wanted to stay anonymous and we out of respect for this man, stopped searching. My mother included him in her duas as the man who is like an angel. But my father is a curious man. On the last day of Ramadan, my father, determined to know who he was, decided to stay awake. But he fell asleep on the porch. By the time he woke up, the drummer was already in the next lane and my father chased him. We waited for our father to return so we could start eating. As he entered, the obvious question hung in the air, ‘Who is he?’ He broke the silence and said, he couldn’t find him, the man with the drum was too fast. As he talked, he stuttered. Mom knew he was lying, she rolled her eyes every time he lied.
“We moved that year to a place that smelled like kabaab and sulemani chai and where azaan was not banned. So I don’t know if he still does the same. But the years I spent with my family, that is the most memorable Ramadan.”
Confused I ask her, “Why?”
“Because he was living by the spirit of Ramadan more religiously than any Muslim we knew in that lane. I have a feeling that he wasn’t a Muslim because it was a small town and in a smaller community, we’d have come to know the person, somehow.”
I don’t stop her and she continues, “There are three things you are supposed to develop in Ramadan: empathy for those who are not as privileged as you, the ability to sacrifice and last but not the least, consistency. He had all three, empathy for us, he sacrificed his sleep and his identity and he was consistent. He didn’t want recognition for his good deed.”
As Iram finishes the story, the kuchumbar is ready too. She serves the biryani and I am not sure if her silence is an expectation for me to say something, but I do anyway, “So the point is you miss waking up to a drumroll every day.”
~
Eid Mubarak writers, share a story from your childhood days or from your recent days about how you or your Muslim friends fasted during Ramadan and celebrated Eid with sheer kurma, pockets full of Eidi and biryani. Use #MyEidStory in the caption while posting it on YourQuote.
Yours, non-religious lover of all religions,
YourQuote Baba
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