Why I'm almost ashamed to say I'm nostalgic about Ramadan
And how it's it's connected to Easter. Well, it's not. But it's about the right to practice the religion of your ancestors and be part of a community.
Prelude: The article below is about a thorny subject. It regards my own story and point of view, from a life lived in a religious dictatorship. I’m not passing judgment on the notion of Islam itself, and most certainly I’m not passing judgment on people who practice Islam, or fast during Ramadan, etc.
The lunar year is not fixed. Or one could say it is, it just doesn’t overlap with the solar year, or “the year” as we know it. This is why Arabic months, and therefore the celebrations in Islam such as different Eids, Ramadan and Ashura never occur on the same date on the calendar.
When I was little, from around the age of 5, possibly to 8 or 9, I didn’t know this. I thought Ramandan was something sad that happened in winter — because in those years it did — and after that Nowruz would arrive, the happy occasion of the arrival of spring, our biggest holiday, new clothes and gifts and sweets and lots of new cartoons on tv. From what I remember, Ramadan was never considered as a joyful feast or a moment of celebration in Iran, as it supposedly is in the rest of the world of Islam. I don’t think it had been so even before the revolution, because the generation of my parents and grandparents too never looked forward to Ramadan either. The more traditionalist ones just knew that it was the time to fast.
I think it has largely to do with Shi’ism, the second largest branch of Islam. Shia Islam commemorates the martyrdom of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib —the cousin and and son-in-law of prophet Mohammad, who’sand the first and one of the most important imams of Shias— which occurs on the 19th day of Ramadan and lingers on until the 23rd. That’s nearly 5 days of mourning. So for us, Ramadan was always a period of harsher control of hijab, closed water fountains, restaurants and cafes that were closed before sunset (Iftar time). Eating and drinking outdoors, in front of fasters, was a great sin and therefore a crime, in the land of institutionalized Islam, also known as the Islamic Republic. The cartoons and the few cheerful children programs we had were suspended until the the end of Ramadan, or Eid el-Fitr which until quite recently, was only 1 day of holiday in Iran.
I remember things started to change when I was a teenager and the Regime started to promote Ramadan as a happy occasion —the feast of God— that must be celebrated. Colorful billboards of greetings were put in the cities, and special cheerful programs and even sitcoms were put on tv. The Eid was fattened on the calendar. But I never saw or heard anyone in Iran who ever for a second considered Eid as a real celebration, compared to something like Nowruz. (Speaking of religious Eids, the only one I have seen slightly more dearly celebrated in Iran is Eid Ghadir, which again is a specific Shia eid. Ashura is also widely commemorated in Iran, with deep roots in pre-Islam history and even Catholicism, at the moment Ashura too is a Shia occurrence.)
In those Ramadans of my childhood, the only thing that happened apart from not having anything to watch on tv and my grandparents fasting was that once or twice we'd be invited for Iftar to a restaurant by an elderly cousin of my grandmother’s, who did this in the memory of her late husband. I remember it was always chelow-kabab, Iranian rice with grilled kabab, the traditional type where they’d put a tiny pack of butter on your rice dish, and a raw egg yolk in an egg cup for each person. You’d first mix your rice with the butter, and then the egg yolk. Creamy and rich next to the juicy kabab, sprinkled with sumac. This was ordinary though, nothing to do with Ramadan.
I do remember the first time I fasted. It was second grade, and there were 2, perhaps 3 little girls in my class who were fasting. I think they got a lot of praise, because when I went home, I insisted to my mom that I wanted to fast too. My mom, who I think had never fasted in her life, protested, said (rightly) that I was too little. But she gave in. I wonder whether I had blabbed something religious and moralistic that I had been told at school to shame her into letting me do it.
So the next morning, in the dead of the dark she woke me up to eat Sahari. It’s the meal you eat before sunrise, to sustain you all the way through sunset. I still remember it was ghormeh sabzi, the hearty stew with lamb, beans and tons of exquisitely overcooked herbs, served with rice. It’s strange, and yet wonderful to wake up at 4 am to eat such a big, serious meal like this. You’d have dates, and tea, and lots of water too, so that you wouldn’t be not dehydrated throughout the day (of course you will be nevertheless). The radio would be on, playing all the prayers of Ramadan, and perhaps Quran, but the important part was that once the morning Azan (call to prayer) was played you couldn’t eat or drink anymore.
That day my mom fasted too, because I wouldn’t have been having lunch with her. Of course, I wouldn’t take a snack to school, so she gave me some money, something she never did because she didn’t want me to buy junk food, but on that day she made me promise I’d buy something to eat if I was very hungry. I didn’t. I came back home and I think I took a nap, as there were still a few hours left until Iftar, which back then happened early in the afternoon, as it was winter.
I don’t remember that Iftar with many details, but again there would have been dates, and tea as the first thing you open your fast with, so that it warms up and softens your stomach. Then possibly a soup, then things like kotlet, fried patties of mince meat and potatoes (god they’re crazy good when cold, wrapped in sangak flatbread with sliced tomatoes and proper gherkins).
That year I fasted only 2 days. The next time I remember fasting was in middle school and I think I fasted for the whole month of Ramadan. I know I didn’t miss any days because of menstruation as in those days my period had just started and it was most irregular and all over the place. (Women are not allowed to fast or say prayers during menstruation, but they must fast the same number of days later to make up for it!). I admit, the only reason I fasted that year was in the hope of losing some weight, it can hardly get any more twisted than this, but I’m sure I wasn’t the first nor the last teenager who fasted in the hope of losing weight.
I think one of my dearest ever Ramandan (food) memories is from this year: I woke up at 4 something, and the tantalizing smell of something delicious was already filling the house. Believe it or not it was beef tongue, in a velvety tomato and garlic sauce, and next to it there were the most perfect French fries, possibly because they had been fried once the night before, and partly once more during reheating, and they were sucking up the sauce into their crunchy edges and soft and spongy middles. That meal was perfection.
I never fasted again in my life, and the only food memories I have of Ramadan were once in the last year of high school when they gave us all Noon panir sabzi, a flatbread wrap stuffed with lots of fresh herbs, white feta-like cheese and possibly walnuts. Quintessentially Iranian. And then in the first years of university when the fast food shops on Enghelab streets where universities are, sold bowls of Haleen and Ash Reshteh. The former, a grain and meat porridge topped with butter, sugar, and cinnamon. the latter a hearty soup of pulse, herbs and noodles and topped with fried onion and whey.
Although these memories may sound nostalgic, warm and sweet —which to a degree they were— the reality remains that Ramadans were hard in Iran and they still are. A part of Iranians, perhaps the part more inclined to demonstrate their contempt with the regime, are outspokenly against Ramadan. The Irony of the Islamic Republic is that, having blurred the borders between personal belief and political ideology, it has driven away from religion even those many people who would’ve kept on to a watered-down, traditional version of Islam.
I have never had any sort of attachment to Islam, neither have my parents. My grandparents were the ones who were slightly more observant, and this pattern was true for many middle class families in the, in big cities, but not all of them. I had a brief period of a few weeks of soul searching with Islam during high school, then spent quite a few years in my early 20s fiercely fighting it all armed with a Dawkinsian bible, and eventually found my own way around ideology and made peace with spirituality. I know this story is not unique, but I also know what I’m about to say will enrage many, particularly Iranians.
I believe the Islamic Republic, among many other things, has rubbed Iranians of the right to have a normal relationship with religion, to practice the many different types of Islam, and indeed, to practice other religions and atheism. Iranians hardly ever consider themselves part of the great muslim community in the world, and I don’t really think the rest of the muslim world consider us a part of it either. This is mostly intentional from the part of Iranians. Our whole raison d'être seems to be around proving that we are not Arabs (and most of us are not, but there are Iranian Arabs too, there have always been, even before the Islamic conquest of 1500 years ago. They mostly live in the south west of Iran).
And it’s understandable! On one hand, almost everyone outside Iran (or should I say in the West?) think we’re all Arabs or speak Arabic. On the other hand, the religious dictatorship of the Islamic Republic has tried for nearly half a century to impose Islamic ceremonies over old Iranian ones; they have fought hard to erase charshanbe souri (the last Thursday night of the year), tirgan and other old Iranian traditions. They have forced us at school to perform religious ceremonies, chants and prayers, even forbad names that were not religious at a certain point.
Not only people have been fighting this, but out of the heart of this fascism, yet another fascism has grown. The nationalistic one, horrifyingly echoing the notions of early 20th century Europe. The delusional madness of the “Aryan race” (I know, somehow both Germans AND Iranians could be of Aryan race!). And yet another attempt at erasing whatever that is religious, or Islamic from Iran, which is absurd and equally as ignorant as the regime’s relentless desire to erase all that is Iranian, and not Islamic in Iran.
At its worst, this view crudely accuses anyone practicing Islam in Iran to be aligned with the regime, and when it’s more subtle, it silently judges anyone who practices Islam, for “not having learned yet how damaging religion is at its core, even after 44 years under a Islamic regime”.
These are treacherous waters to enter, I know that white feminists and Iranians pro and against the regime would have something to say here. And perhaps had I not been living in Italy, the idea of a right to live religion in normality would never have occurred to me.
Today is Easter, and every year at Easter, much more than Christmas, I gaze with wonder at how religious Italians are. While this in truth does creates problems in the field of civil rights, despite the separation of church and state (no actual same sex marriage, constant debate on the abortion law, etc), the religious aspect of Italian life is lived with normality, something out of tradition. The Via Crucis, or the reanimation of the Passions of Christ which is held every year very close to my house on Good Friday, is strikingly similar to Ashoura of the Shia’s. Many towns have their own processione day during the year too, where the saint’s statue, usually virgin Mary, is taken around the town on the shoulders of the citizens. There’s usually a festival around it, baked goods, cookies, sometimes the festivity is actually tied to a sagra, a harvest or something. All very normal things.
Then there are some weird things, like sending your kids to church for a year or so to prepare for a religious ceremony, and throwing a party sometimes as large as a wedding for that ceremony. I don’t stomach the idea of making children do the religious stuff of their parents. But I have come to learn that’s part of Italian normality as well. Even more “normal” than this, is people who are not really religious, getting married in church. Perhaps for the sake of their parents, perhaps they like getting married in church even if they don’t consider themselves particularly religious. And this is exactly what I’m talking about when I say the right of living religion normally has been taken away from Iranians by a religious dictatorship.
Before finishing this piece, I asked different Iranian friends about Iftar and food and memories from Ramadan (partly why it took so long). Belonging to my bubble, my friends too mostly come from non religious backgrounds. But nevertheless they have fond memories of iftar. A few said that their parents were keen to fast, even though they're not religious, just like people observing Lent.
Perhaps it was because we were kids. Perhaps the chants and sunsets and the aromas of the food were just too nostalgic. I have no desire ever to observe Ramdan myself in the future, but I do hope for a day where those Iranians who want, can do it free of judgment, and those who don’t want to observe it, can do it free of persecution.
Beautiful!