My Little Ramazan - Bayram

Thurs 9th - Sat 11th September 2010

Ok, so I said there would be no more. No more Ramazan, no more blogging right? But a girl’s allowed to change her mind. A girl’s allowed to stage a comeback. I just could not resist recording how these three celebratory days of Bayram have gone for my little family. It kind of feels like a big full stop on the whole affair.

In exactly the same style as my efforts during Ramazan, Bayram has been very much adapted to suit our situation here in Scotland. Imagine if you can, spending Christmas in a place where not only is nobody else celebrating it, but they haven’t even heard of it. But you strive forwards anyway. For the love of your husband, as opposed to the love of God, you strive forwards into blissfully ignorant celebration.

It all started in the best way it possibly could have. With giving our son presents. When we heard him wake in the morning, Mustafa and I skipped into his room, camera in hand and watched him discover a mountain of new stuff. A Bob the Builder figure with its very own toolbox, a Bob the Builder car making ‘We Can Fix It’ pledges, a Bob the Builder construction helmet for times of high risk construction work and a Bob the Builder coat for the upcoming Scottish Winter (have you spotted a theme yet?). He was delighted. And even more delighted when Mummy and Daddy joined him for breakfast.

Now I did say that one of the first things I wanted to do with my new-found freedom was eat something breakfasty. But do you know what? Now it came to it, I just wanted a coffee. I stood next to the kitchen window, mug in hand, listening to my son and my husband exchange gurgles and giggles at the breakfast table, and I took my first sip. And by God, it was good. This was completely different to any after-sun-down coffee I’d had during the last month. This was the first taste of the day. This was the first taste as I stood in a patch of golden, early morning sunshine streaming through the window, my eyes closed, the warmth of the sun and the warmth of the coffee fusing so beautifully that I didn’t know when my skin ended and my taste buds began. This was what I had missed.

And after that the morning just got better. After the incredible coffee fix, I moved onto my very own, first ever, home-baked Baklava. If you’ve ever been to Greece or Turkey or perhaps Egypt, you may have sampled this amazing stuff. Layers and layers of butter-coated wafer-thin pastry, interlaced with chopped nuts of every luxurious type and soaked in a mixture of honey, sugar, lemon and spices. Yes, it is as lethal as it sounds. It is no small wonder that people in Eastern Turkey suffer from a variety of heart-related problems. But if you’ve ever tasted Baklava you will understand why they run that particular risk.

I’d baked the stuff the day before, following an idiot’s guide recipe from the internet. Big gamble for someone who’s husband is pretty much a Baklava connoisseur. And I couldn’t believe my luck when I took it out of the oven and it looked exactly like the real thing. Surely my luck had to stop there. Surely there was no way I could have created something that actually tasted like the real thing too. Maybe I should coat it in varnish and make it into fridge magnets like they do with those mini loaves of bread in souvenir shops. Could there be a market for that? Maybe I could hang out with a suitcase of them at Bodrum airport and target tourists who’d perhaps forgotten to buy gifts for people they didn’t really like. Baklava fridge magnet Madam? It looks just like the real thing.

But lo and behold I could cross varnish off the shopping list. As Mustafa tucked into the first bite of my lovingly-prepared sweet treat, a broad smile spread over his face. It tasted good! Hence, it became our first ever breakfast after my first-ever Ramazan. Not the most nutritious start to the day who cared? We were celebrating the breaking of our fast, with an actual break-fast worth shouting about. Yey!

As if presents, coffee and baklava on the same morning weren’t enough, we were all jumping and jiving at the fact that Mustafa had the whole day off work! So, pyjamas were donned for much of the morning whilst Baran introduced his assortment of Bob the Builder items to all his other toys. Mustafa dominated the phone for a good while, bellowing ‘Iyi Bayramlar’ (Happy Bayram) to a plethora of friends and family in Eastern Turkey, and I tried to shove the thought of the resulting phone bill to the back of my mind.

I too spouted my very best Turkish at the in-laws, which isn’t all that great owing to the lack of recent time spent in Turkey. It was wonderful to speak to Mustafa’s mum and find out that she was out of hospital, following her heart attack earlier this month. It was not so wonderful to hear the weakness in her voice and to learn that she was pretty much bed-ridden. Mustafa’s eyes glazed over when he spoke to her and I wished at that very moment that I could jet us all over there. Times of celebration are difficult at times of illness. We all know that.

Mustafa put a brave front on by insisting that we all put on our best clothes and go out. A chill ran down my spine. Best clothes? Could I get away with trackie bottoms and flip-flops? Something in the way Mustafa bounded downstairs in dressy trousers and a shirt told me I couldn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting dressed up but my wardrobe really does leave a lot to be desired. Over the last two years I have taken immense pleasure in clothing my son in the funkiest range of garments the high street has to offer, but since I became a parent there has been some kind of invisible block to spending money on myself. And even if I had the money to spend, I have no idea what I like anymore. One thing (amongst others) that I miss about being in my twenties is the certainty with which I clothed my body. Now, as a thirties girl, if it’s got a stretchy waistband and it’s crease-free, it’s in. Oh, the sad, sad truth.

I managed to rescue a dress from the back of my wardrobe and slipped it on over a pair of leggings (stretchy waistband incorporated). The outfit at least resembled something close to smart. Baran sported the lumberjack look in a red checked shirt and clearly outshone both Mustafa and I in the stakes of pure gorgeousness. I remember one day not too long ago I was having a bit of a confidence crisis and Mustafa said to me: “How can you think you are not beautiful? Look at your son and just think, you made him!” Good point, well made.

We ended up at the Blue Angel café at Findhorn Community Foundation. This was the very same café I had visited a few weeks earlier with my friend Jo and her twin baby girls, and where Baran had stubbornly refused the most delicious looking pizza ever. Except this time I could order my heart’s desire. Or, more accurately, my heart’s desire had to wait until midday when the ‘food lady’ arrived. That was ok. I could handle that. Waiting was my special skill. I could have waited till sundown if required.

During our wait, Mustafa and I unfolded a copy of the Highland News for today was my big day. As we scoured the pages to find my Ramazan article, I began to think they may have downsized it. Perhaps they’d segregated me to a non-descript corner of a non-descript page and used me as a jaunty little space-filler. Or maybe they’d scrapped the whole idea.

But then we got to page fourteen, and there it was. In all its full page (yes, full page) glory. A truly massive photo of me and Baran crouching behind my copy of ‘The Koran for Dummies’ and a lengthy article entitled ‘Abi Tries Her Hand at Dawn-to-Dusk Fast’. For one thing, I couldn’t believe the photographer had actually managed to snap a photo of Baran when he wasn’t screaming his head off, bearing in mind he was demonstrating a fit of rage during the entire photo session. Having said that, he did have his shoulders hunched in very discontented posture and I had a maniac’s smile fixed on my face which suggested I may have been half-way through singing a desperate rendition of Bob the Builder.

For another thing, I was amazed at the length of the article. Of course, I’d scanned a copy which the reporter had sent to me and I’d approved it. But, having parents with a background in journalism, I knew the way these things tended to get chopped to pieces. What, was it a slow news week? Was nothing else going down in Inverness this week? Surely I couldn’t be that interesting.

But then a spontaneous conversation with the waitress at the café told me that perhaps I was. She’d heard Mustafa and I mention that we’d been fasting and swooped over to find out more. It turns out she was exploring the possibility of entering Islam herself and was intrigued about what drew me to it, considering I was a very white, very freckled, very blonde Westerner. Well, I would have liked to have enlightened her with my extensive knowledge and experience on the matter, but had to humbly admit that my wisdom was limited to half of the contents of ‘The Koran for Dummies’ and that I had no intention of joining the faith. “I’m just supporting my husband.” I explained, and when I saw the look on her face I thought how strange it was that somebody could think this was even more odd than supporting a non-visible, non-tangible entity in the sky.

The rest of our Bayram day included a mammoth nap back at home for father and son whilst mummy tippy-tapped away on her laptop, making notes for her blogs, in a Carrie Bradshaw type way. I was merely lacking the impossibly long legs and big hair. And the ability to chain smoke. Oh, and the walk-in wardrobe. But hey ho.

After napping we all piled back into the car and made our way to the only child-friendly pub within a considerable radius. This pub incorporates a play area for little nippers to run around in whilst parents enjoy the obvious benefits of a pub’s general offerings. And I think it illustrates beautifully just how unconditionally I love my son, that I was willing to consume a microwaved bowl of chewy tomato pasta and two pieces of scorched garlic bread, apparently lacking any actual garlic, for my post-starvation Bayram meal, just so he could roll around in a padded, rainbow-coloured atrium. A mother’s love transcends words yet again.

And, in the early evening when Mustafa’s family would have been about ready to link arms in a raucous round of traditional Turkish dancing, we were walking by the River Ness, watching a magenta sun set in a grey sky. Baran sat in his buggy resting after his Wacky Warehouse antics, and we strolled along, taking in our surroundings and commenting on how nice it was to do something out of the ordinary, however simple it may be. It struck me that Mustafa was in his pensive mode, a state which I had found very enticing when we first met four years ago. Although now I have learned it is as frustrating as it is sexy. It is never easy to draw anything out of him when he switches this mode on. Luckily, the incredible sharpness of my mind told me he was probably thinking about everyone back home. As lovely as this riverside walk was, it was not in the spirit of Bayram, and it could not substitute seeing his Mum, alive and well, with his own eyes. One of the hardest things about relationships is that you cannot package the whole world up and give it to your partner, no matter how good you are at gift-wrapping. All you can offer is yourself.

The following two days of Bayram were back to normal for us really. Except, thankfully, normal now includes three meals a day and a variety of beverages, hot and cold. It was, for this period of time at least, a shame we didn’t live somewhere a bit more cosmopolitan than the Highlands of Scotland so we could have experienced these celebrations with other Muslims. However, I am sure that my future with Mustafa will offer this opportunity and I will make an educated decision then and there about whether or not to participate. Take your bets please . . .

I have a few lingering questions which I have been left with during my post-Ramazan days. Just wanted to jot them down in case I find the answers by the time I next read over this final entry. That way I can feel very pleased with myself which is always a good thing.

1.) Why oh why does Mustafa need time for his stomach to stretch again yet I seem to be able to effortlessly consume my full pre-Ramazan quota??

2.) Why did it take me four weeks of excruciating fasting to lose four pounds, yet only three days of normal eating to gain five?

3.) Is it possible I could become a British Carrie Bradshaw, like my friends Lisa and Alexia seem to think? (Please overlook the fact that Carrie Bradshaw is a fictional character)

4.) Will the words to Bob the Builder ever vacate my conscious and/or subconscious mind?

5.) Will I ever read (and understand) the whole of ‘The Koran for Dummies’?

6.) Will the pastor in Florida burn two hundred copies of the Koran to mark the ninth anniversary 9/11? What kind of fool is he?

7.) Will Mustafa ever be able to stop working twenty-four-seven?

8.) Will my son ever leave the tantrums stage behind him? I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it from a twelve-stone hairy teenager.

9.) Will I ever see fit to participate in Ramazan again?

10.) What will I write about next?

So, until next time, answers on a postcard please . . .