Ramadan

It was a smell I associated with those fair trade Tibetan gift shops on Coventry or with midnight mass in the Catholic Church on Christmas Eve. The scent of burning incense would settle among the sarongs and beaded necklaces; it would waft down the church aisle with a robed priest and the solemn melody of a hymn. As I knelt in the mosque in Sembehun, I found it interesting that one smell could conjure up two such distinct memories.

I rocked forward onto the balls of my feet, trying to mimic the graceful motion of the other women as they rose. The woven prayer mat felt smooth beneath my toes. Light filtered through the slits in the cement wall that divided the women’s portion of the mosque off from the larger room. I liked feeling invisible under the lappa I was using as a head covering. When I kept my head down, only my hands and bare feet betrayed my white skin and for a moment I was anonymous. When people recognized me, they acknowledged my presence with small welcoming smiles. I followed the others as we listened to the repeated refrains of Allah Ahkbar.

Allah Ahkbar – we bent forward at the waist, hands on our knees.

Allah Ahkbar – we stood straight.

Allah Ahkbar – we knelt, foreheads pressed to the ground.

Allah Ahkbar – we sat up, palms open.

Allah Ahkbar – we laid our foreheads to the ground again.

Allah Ahkbar – we stood.

I decided on a whim that I would fast for part of Ramadan. I had planned to be traveling for most of the month, but was spending one week at site in my predominantly Muslim village. When my neighbors asked if I was fasting, I figured I might as well try. They say it is not good to cut fast alone, so my neighbor Regina came to my house every evening after the 7pm call to prayer. We had both cooked earlier, so we would sit on my veranda dipping our hands into the same bowl to scoop up rice and plasas or cassava with soup. After eating, Regina invited me to the mosque for the evening prayers.

For a year, I have enjoyed listening to the call to prayer pouring from the mosque behind my house. Especially when school is not in session, I find my days punctuated by the azan. I wake up before dawn with the first call to prayer and stay in bed waiting for the first glimmers of light to shine through my window. I walk by the mosque every Friday afternoon, but I had never entered. I was curious to see inside the mosque for a change, so I agreed to accompany Regina.

One of the things that I appreciate about Sierra Leoneans is their religious tolerance. The tension that characterizes relations between Christians and Muslims in much of the world is completely absent here. Instead, regardless of whether you choose to pray in a church or a mosque you will be welcomed with open arms. For me, fasting for Ramadan had little to do with religion. On the contrary, it was a way to be a part of my community – to have a child teach me the words of an Arabic prayer, to have my neighbor wake me at 3am to give me a steaming plate of rice, to understand something I didn’t understand before.