Ramadan is here

Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) started yesterday. While some of the people on the program with previous Turkey experience were eagerly anticipating its start--"it's a like a party every night and we don't have to fast because we're foreigners," I remember one girl saying maybe a month ago--I was a little bit anxious. It wasn't because I was scared of not being able to get lunch, rather it was because things were changing in this country I had just adjusted to, and in a way that I couldn't predict. But, as the last couple days have past, my Ramadan experience has been far less than overwhelming.

The lead up to Ramadan was long. For at least the past month, Ramadan related ads have been circulating. It began with billboards advertising the special foods traditionally eaten during Ramadan and restaurant or banquet halls that specially cater to serving an iftar, the evening feast that breaks the fast. As Ramadan approached, a wider variety of companies began to work in Ramadan to their advertisements, and everything from cellphone companies to Pepsi, began to take a Ramandan-time tinge. While my friend wryly pointed out that the Muslims made the wrong holiday for capitalism because unlike Christian holidays, which now tie so well into commercialism, Ramadan involves people not consuming for a significant portion of the day. I think, however, that the steady advance of the Turkish economy is proving his words wrong.

Though Ramadan fever is certainly in the air, my own personal expectations have been a bit different. I have been living for the past week and a half with just my host brother. My host parents went off three or four weeks ago to their summer home in Bodrum and my host sister disappeared a week and a half ago. I suspect she's in Istanbul, staying with the family's oldest son, but it'd be awkward now to ask where she is because she's been gone for so long. Anyhow, the day before Ramadan began my host brother told me that he was only planning on fasting sometimes and that the real meaning of Ramadan was not fasting but sitting down to a big meal with everyone in your family together. With no family in sight, Ramadan at my house has been a rather low key (read non-existent) affair.

While unfortunately, I haven't been able to have a iftar meal first-hand, it's just been just as interesting watching Turkey change during Ramadan. While I don't know exact numbers, my teacher reckoned that about 2/3rds of the people in Turkey fast during Ramadan. This seems hard to measure, because I have a feeling a lot of people say they fast but don't actually keep it through the day. Yet still with possibly two thirds of population not eating, the day-time face of Turkey could change significantly. My fears however were allayed when I walked out my door yesterday and saw the neighborhood simit (halfway in between a bagel and a pretzel) vendor selling to a customer as usual. Making my way to school, it appeared that maybe a third or a half of the restaurants were closed, a far cry from the cataclysmic predictions of some that only McDonalds would be open. Having feared the worst (i.e. savored the opportunity), we had all decided the day before to go to the food court at the abnormally plush mall 5 minutes away from my school for lunch. While most of the restaurants were open anyway, we sat down to a delicious lunch of KFC and Burger King (which is actually on the expensive side in Bursa). A curious item at the food court was a man and a pair of headscarfed women, who we assumed must have been fasting. The question echoed through our group: were they showing off their piety or just taking a respite from the hot sun in the air-conditioned food court?

The experiences of my classmates have been interesting too. While one or two are fasting along with their families, it seems like at most half the families are fasting, which conforms to the same secularist bias I've perceived throughout the program. One friend of mine had a particularly interesting experience regarding fasting in his family. While every member of his family said they'd be fasting for Ramadan, when he woke up at three in the morning to have the traditional pre-sunrise breakfast, he found only his mother awake, who informed him that she was the only one fasting. In regards to Ramadan, there definitely seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what people say and they do.

As I said before, my Ramadam experience hasn't been particularly marked, but I'm only two days in so far and we'll see how it changes as the month goes on. Inşallah, I'll get to an iftar.

In other news, tomorrow is the last day of classes in the summer program. We've been taking exams (meaningless actually because we don't get a grade from the program) for the last several days and tomorrow evening most of the students will be leaving Bursa tomorrow night to fly back to America. Because I'll be staying, my plan is a bit a different: I'm taking the ferryboat Saturday morning to Istanbul, where I'll be in staying for the next ten days by myself. Anyways, I'm off to pack.