Ramadan, and the ironies of life

About three weeks ago, on the second day of Ramadan, I was on the beach and stopped to chat with a few local ladies I’m friendly with. It was the middle of the day and they were resting on the beachside berugak, their brows drawn and their faces almost grimacing. Eni said she had a headache and felt a little dizzy.

I suggested maybe it was the sudden change to going without water, that maybe her body wasn’t happy with the unfamiliar dehydration. The ladies wouldn’t have a bar of that though, and maintained it was either something in the weather – it was windy – or just something they’d eaten. The fact that they were carrying several kilograms of fruit in baskets on top of their heads, walking in deep sand on the beach in the midday tropical sun without eating or even drinking a glass of water was not the cause.

I didn’t know that much about Ramadan so took the opportunity to chat with them about it. They went on to explain to me that they fast from 5am through till 6pm each day for 30 days. Senna proudly told me there was 28 days to go. At the end of Ramadan – the exact date is yet to be set and will be announced nationally by someone high up and depends on the sighting of the new crescent moon – there will be a huge celebration called idul fitri, and all the locals are already preparing dishes and plans for this highly anticipated occasion. Millions of locals working in the cities and islands travel home to their villages to celebrate, and Indonesia pretty much has a week long public holiday.

The reasons Muslim people fast for a month each year include sacrificing to enable them to empathise with people less fortunate than them. It is also a way to practise self control, and a way to show extra piety for the month. The struggle and self control and focus brings them closer to their God. When I, tactfully, suggested to the women that because they work so hard in the heat surely God would be ok if they drank some water, Eni said no way. And if anyone sneaks a drink or food, God would know, and know that they would be less a person for doing so.

In the weeks since chatting with the fasting ladies, I’ve watched the locals leading quite a different lifestyle. They move even slower, sleep even more often, and have struggle written all over their faces. We haven’t seen As, the seller that comes from Lombok each day and walks through our village, since fasting started and we miss the option of having her home delivered cakes and snacks. I’ve learnt not to offer visitors who drop by any coffee or even water, and through respect we try not to eat or drink in front of people during the day. Some shops are closed, some half open, the island building projects are taking even longer or have paused, and if you want anything done it’s best to organise it for the evening, after ‘open fasting’. If you are at a restaurant for dinner, don’t expect to see a waiter between about 6 and 6.30, it’s not just poor service, it’s time for them to break their fast for the day!

Open fasting is a sight to behold also. Families gather around, groups of staff sit together and it is a very social and joyful time for “2, 4, 6, 8, dig in, don’t wait!”. Everyone hoes into the food they’ve prepared throughout the day for this very moment. It’s a feast and each night they act like they haven’t eaten for months. Suddenly faces lift, eyes sparkle again, and open-mouthed food-filled smiles greet you as you walk past. “Makan!!” they say with glee. Food! Eating time! I find it hard not to giggle at the incredible contrast from the day 😋.

The first time I went into Lombok during Ramadan I was amazed at the extra amount of food stalls lining the streets in the late afternoon. And there were heaps of young coconut stands. Apparently it is custom to break fasting each evening with sweet foods first, and also coconut water is very good for an empty belly. Many of the stalls sell ‘jajan’ or cakes, and ‘burbur’ or sickly sweet porridges, all in flimsy little plastic cups or containers with lids shut tight with staples.

The town is alive with people getting out and about, enjoying the treats, letting off fire-crackers for hours on end, and the songs and prayer recitals coming from the half dozen mosques within the few square kilometres is deafening. People gather in the mosques for the socially enjoyable evening prayer. It is a month long nightly carnival.

And it continues through until midnight or so. Constant singing and wailing and sometimes monotone, sometimes lively, recitals of the Quran. From what I’m told it is recited from start to finish through the 30 days of Ramadan.

Eventually everyone goes to sleep, and then, unbelievably so, at around 3am in the morning I wake with a small heart attack as the man in the mosque screams down the loudspeakers and speaker systems “sahur sahur sahur sahur”. WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP he is yelling! The first time I heard it I wanted to float up into the sky above the town of Tanjung and listen to all the village mosques – there seems to be one on nearly every corner – and listen to them all screaming and smashing apart the ungodly hours of the dead of night. It is a sound you have to hear to believe, this shattering of peace. You can almost feel the broken sleep of all the neighbours in their beds in the houses all around you. I wonder what the aliens think? And the spirits? Why so early you might ask? It’s so they can get up and have their morning wash and eat their morning meal before saying their morning prayers all before the morning sun shines its first light into the sky.

So I understand more now the reason behind the pinched faces and the extra siestas taken each morning and afternoon. It’s not only because they are going without food and drink (and sex and cigarettes and bad habits), it’s because their sleep patterns are severely disrupted, and their days start in the middle of the night.

The same happened on Gili Meno for the first couple of weeks. Luckily our bungalows are maybe a kilometre or so away from the mosque, but every night we hear the endless singing and monotone Quran recitals. And each morning around 3ish I’d nearly hit the roof with shock, heart pounding and my head in disbelief, at the yelling as it broke through the sleeping palm trees and set all the rooster off, again. Thank goodness it’s back to sleep for us non-fasters. And luckily by now I am mostly able to stay asleep through the Mosque’s normal 5am beautifully melodic sing-song call to prayer.

Many visitors aren’t as forgiving and easy going as I am however, and we’ve heard that the complaints on this tourist island came forthwith. The last couple of weeks I haven’t heard the 3am racket and it seems the volume has been turned down for the rest of the daily and nightly broadcasts, so we can only hear them quietly in the distance.

This morning I was awake though at around five am because I woke when Made returned from watching a Euro quarter final match at Ibu Mae’s warung next door. It was still pitch black outside and I laid in bed and listened to the man singing the azan. His voice was soft and warm and as it blared out of the ridiculously poor quality speakers it sounded soulful, like a beautiful lullaby from a distant land. It’s melody is rich and flowing and sometimes it makes me feel like I could float away on its dulcet tones. But it was this morning that two memories came back to me and I suddenly realised something I hadn’t thought of before.

I remembered back to September 2011 when I stayed in a beautiful colonial style guest house. It had manicured gardens surrounded by a tall fence topped with coiled barb wire and glass shards, and was manned by men wearing army garb and wielding AK47’s. It was in a well-to-do suburb of Kampala in Uganda, and this was where I first fell in love with Harley. We were part of Kwaya, a wonderful group of Australians there to sing songs with the African Children’s Choir, and we’d raised a lot of money for the world renowned Waitoto orphanage, both strong Christian based organisations. But each morning there in that guest house, after mostly sleepless nights in separate rooms, Harley and I would sit quietly with a cuppa out on the balcony, two atheists enjoying the sounds of the call to prayer that wafted over to us across the valley from town.

I’d never heard a call to prayer before, and its doleful melodies filled the peaceful morning and accompanied the roosters and birds slowly waking the town. It was a beautiful backdrop to our mornings in Kampala when Harley and I, like teenagers, passed secret notes and poems to each other across the large guest table.

Fast forward to 2014 and I was being enchanted by the sounds of a hundred mosques broadcasting the evening call to prayer from across the city of Cairo which laid out in front of me as I rode a spirited grey Arabian horse down the desert hills alongside the pyramids. I was riding with the three partners of a grassroots charity that provides medical aid and repatriation to the struggling working horses in Giza; a beautiful English angel, a truly extraordinary young Danish lady and their local Egyptian partner. Cairo is huge and it sprawled out below us, the entire city hummed with the songs of prayer. Back within the high walls of the stables, the men who worked there and cared for all the horses were playing the Quran nonstop on their radio all day, which created a strangely peaceful and spiritual sound, sheltered from the busy city. It became the soundtrack to the bombs and explosions that blasted in my head and heart when I got the call the next day from Julie giving me the news that Harley had died.

Before 2011, in my long 40++ years on this messed up world, I’d read stories written by Muslims but the closest I’d come to anybody or anything Muslim was a building I used to drive past on the old Pacific Highway to Brisbane. At least, I think it was a mosque. And then these two occasions, in Uganda when I fell in love with the most beautiful man on the planet, and in Egypt when three years later he left this earth, were my only experiences with the beautiful sounds that come from a mosque. And now. Now I am actually living in a Muslim country. Irony? Or something more…. In any case, I wonder who’d have thunk it.