Sharing Iftar And Communion During A Pandemic
Written By Fola Laoye
Growing up as a kid in a Muslim family, the best thing about Ramadan was the communal meal we always shared at Iftar. It wasn’t just communal, it was also huge in most families. Iftar is the meal eaten at sunset to break the day’s fast. People who aren’t at home with their family look for the nearest mosque to break their fast and pray.
I remember going to the mosque down the street with my dad every evening in Ramadan for Maghrib prayer. It didn’t matter that sometimes, some of the kids like me had already secretly drunk water or eaten biscuits earlier in the day, our enthusiasm for Iftar was always still high up there. There’s this genuine connection that brings us all together at sunset, irrespective of skin colour, age and tribe, to break our fast and say the evening prayer as a congregation, with our shoulders touching.
In many Muslim households in Nigeria, dinner during Ramadan is pretty special and different from the regular evening meals, in that the kids receive incentives, from an extra piece of meat or a whole tin of evaporated milk to go with your pap, as a reward for fasting.
In many families, Iftar tends to be a three-course meal, with the first course being fruits and dates. It is recommended to end the day’s fasts with dates and fruits, as a sort of palate cleanser and so, Ramadan was easily the only time we had access to different types of fruits for 30 days straight. Big round trays of diced fruits in disposable plates (bananas, pineapples, cucumbers, and watermelon), and another tray with dates were usually passed around to break the day’s fast.
After the Maghrib prayer, we would go back into the house for the next course, which is usually pap and akara or moi-moi, also known as koko and kosai in Northern Nigeria. The final course is usually delayed until the last prayer of the day, and the grandness of this depends on the financial status of the family.
In the spirit of communion, it’s not uncommon to host guests for Iftar, from relatives to friends of the family, to Christian cousins who just want to experience the Iftar feast.
The food, of course, is always memorable, but the warmth, laughter, and banter shared between family, friends, and random Muslim brothers and sisters at Iftar made breaking the fast even more memorable.
The camaraderie of Iftar and food in Ramadan transcends race, tribe, gender and other seeming social barriers. Ramadan is a shared experience between almost the 1 billion Muslims that exist all over the world, and so, feeding others, low-income or not, during Ramadan is one of the easiest ways to unite the Muslim community. Food is an essential part of human existence, and this is further demonstrated in the manner in which the community utilizes technology to connect and share the spirit of Ramadan via social media.
As such, all a fasting Muslim observing Ramadan away from family has to do is post a tweet requesting to connect with the members of the Muslim community, and they’d probably get enough Iftar invites to last the whole 29 or 30 days of Ramadan.
In my experience, spending Ramadan as the only visible Muslim in a remote village in South-Eastern Nigeria was a very boring and lonely experience due to the absence of said community in the area.
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ramadan this year is definitely different for Muslims all over the world, as citizens have been forced to stay at home to curb the spread of the virus. As such, the gatherings that defined Ramadan, such as communal mosque prayers and events, hosting and dining out have all been suspended. As it is, people fortunate to be on lockdown with their immediate families are the ones to share the communal feeling of Ramadan with.
For Safiyyah who’s on lockdown with her family in Lagos, they are unable to continue the annual tradition of sharing Iftar with members of their estate mosque. In Lekan’s case, observing Ramadan this year is especially difficult because he’s spending the lockdown alone and away from family, as he lives alone. In spite of this, “it’s getting easier as the day goes by”, he says.
Muslims all over the world would have to innovate ways to uphold this tradition via virtual communion for the first time. From Zoom Iftar dates to restaurant Iftar platters and virtual cash donations to food charities, these are some of the systems young Muslims are adopting this period.
We all miss going out, but since ‘Rona won’t take its leg off our necks, we need to improvise and keep the laughter, warmth and togetherness at Iftar going.
Fola is a writer with interests in African Literature and entertainment. Currently living in Abuja, her favourite things include Quora, reality TV and pasta.