Issue No. 612
Living
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14 - 20 November 2002 Issue No. 612 Living |
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Mood Swings:
Mood Swings: No expectations, no disappointment
Growing up in the 1980s meant that Ramadan came in summer. One's earliest memories of fasting are then, inevitably, of thirst. And being summer, the days were interminably long, even though that was before the days of daytime saving hours. There was, of course, the joy of acting like the grownups and denying that midday lunch treat prepared for the youngsters in the kitchen. "I am fasting," I would tell my grandmother indignantly, how dare she suggest a tasbira like children? And being summer, Ramadan often came when we were at Alexandria or wherever, so that for the little girl Ramadan was something that occurred during the school vacation and was itself a holiday and a month of celebrations. There were the iftars at various relatives, but mainly at grandmother's, and everyday there were treats. There was the chicken soup, the kishk with chicken, placed on my side of the table, (yes, it seemed then that I was the centre of grandmother's culinary plans). There was the foul with fried eggs and then there was the konafa and aish saraya with fresh cream (that was before the innovation of pistachios and pine nuts on aish saraya, which my mother to her last days would frown upon as totally untraditional and ostentatious).
I was allowed a coke in Ramadan, normally a privilege reserved for Friday lunch. Mummy allowed me to stay up a little bit in Ramadan and the eight o'clock curfew was lifted. She actually allowed me to watch television during the week in Ramadan, another bending of the rules. And those were the days when we had only two television channels, so there was hardly any quibbling or bickering among family members as to which programme to watch, consensus was easy to reach. Everybody watched the fawazir, of course, the now (thankfully) extinct brand of entertainment that involved riddles and musicals. They usually starred Nelly, later Samir Ghanem and even later still Sherihan. We actually loved to watch them.
Ramadan also meant preparing for the feast. The last week or so was taken up by plans for the meal and the eid visits, the kahk, and more importantly buying new clothes. And another treat was going downtown (that was where people shopped, west al-balad) with Mummy, just the two of us, to pick up something nice for me to wear on the eid. I have a vague memory of kahk being baked at my grandmother's kitchen. I was allowed to hold the warm, slightly wobbly, rounded dough in my hand and add the pinched decorations and then set the dough on the baking tray. How it melted in your mouth!
All these memories come rushing back as I try to understand how Ramadan ceased being a celebration, something to look forward to, and became an ordeal. Ramadan has become a wintry event, which makes the fasting easier, granted. But the season, as well as life's commitments, mean that it's no longer a vacation. Sleep is extremely irregular, that heavenly seven-hour stretch will remain a dream till the eid break. One has to wake up early and rush around the duties and suffer the horrible traffic jams to be back from work in time for iftar, and millions others want to be home at the same time. Sometimes one has to go back to work in the evening, after iftar, because people have to get newspapers out even in Ramadan. When not at work, post-Ramadan entertainment has admittedly broadened; there are the "tents", and the various cultural activities at Beit Al-Harrawi. But even these lose their charm when you've done them once too often. Family iftars, the cherished highlights of the ordeal, are essentially replicas of one another. There is no way you can date them in your memory: the same food (overcooked and under salted), the same people, the same topics discussed (television dramas and the Arab-Israeli conflict) and the same remarks made (amazing and doomed, respectively) every year.
No body I know bakes kahk at home these days. There is no Teta and no Mummy any more. And they are not coming back, not even for iftar on the first day of Ramadan.
After serious deliberations and soul searching, I have reached the following conclusions. Ramadan has become a disappointment to me, because the little girl still expects it to be different, still looks forward to a celebration. That's the problem with expectations -- my best friend would certainly chuckle, if she weren't in Brussels. No expectations, no disappointment. It's not simply nostalgia as such. It's also resisting the ultimate realisation that times have changed and that one has grown up, that childhood pleasures and treats have become and will remain vestiges of the past, no more.
That extremely sober realisation has prodded the not-so- little girl to take Ramadan a bit more seriously this time around, to at least ponder the meanings behind the holy month etc, etc. In short, to try to do it right. I will not be disappointed by the lack of charm in the social rituals of Ramadan, but instead enjoy the spiritual opportunities and gifts of the month. This is a month of prayer and reflection, not just food and socialising. I even checked out the sections on fasting in Ghazali's Ihyaa ulum al-din, I hereby confess.
That having been said, let me also confess that despite the disappointment and the general lethargy by which I receive the social Ramadan, I still have a teeny weenie bit of hope. Who knows? Maybe a miracle will happen by the end of the month. Maybe eid will bring a special treat like old times, after all.
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