Josh Burt
M
Inside Looking Out
A Eugenean living in Abu
Dhabi marvels at Ramadan.
By Jane DeGidio
I
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jane DeGidio, a Eugenean currently living in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), gives us her perspective of Ramadan from
inside that Muslim country. A former dean of students and student af-
fairs administrator at UO, she is the chief student affairs officer at the
Abu Dhabi campus of Zayed University. ZU was established to bring
Western-style education to the women of the UAE
Kaukab Jhumra Smith
describe the euphoric state I feel after I’ve been fasting a week.”
Farid Hassan, the philosophical, middle-aged owner of Ali
Baba Café, waxes poetic. After you break the day’s fast, “Life all
of a sudden explodes,” he says. “Movement begins, almost like
when at the end of winter spring comes. Life begins to have some
form of glitter.”
“That’s what it’s like for me — a rebirth,” says Rankin. “It re-
furbishes my feeling about what kind of human being I want to be.”
For Hasnah Toran, a UO grad student, Ramadan gives clarity
of purpose. “Ramadan is the time you take to think about your
final destination: What is the thing I should be doing with my
life?” she says.
Many feel fasting creates compassion toward hunger and
poverty. “When you’re reduced to hunger, it really gives you a
different perspective,” says Toran. When your growling stomach
makes you irritable, fasting tests your tolerance too, says Hamida
Bruton, a retired hospital aide.
For others, fasting provides a return to familiar childhood tra-
ditions. A South Asian couple, married 31 years, say they fast be-
cause they want to expose their children to the practice.
Still others, like Hassan or Bruton, cite studies saying that it’s
healthy to give your body a break from food.
Talal Al Rahbi leads
evening prayers at EMU.
uslims
in
Eugene come
from a stagger-
ing array of countries, from
South Africa to Palestine to
China. Converts, immi-
grants, second-generation
Americans and international
students, many bring along
with their religion the cul-
tural practices of their
homelands.
A key difference be-
tween observing Ramadan
Pat Adi (left) celebrates Eid-
ul-Fitr 2002 with a friend.
in your home country and in
Eugene, several Muslims agree, is the lack of wider community
participation. “In Palestine, the whole society is moving accord-
ing to the hours of Ramadan. Here, the movements and feelings
are different,” says Farid Hassan. “It’s yourself and your family,
like a cell, rather than the whole community.”
Hassan and his wife will fast this Ramadan while cooking all
meals at their restaurant. Hassan says he won’t be affected. “If the
mind is set, the body follows the orders,” he shrugs, adding the
day would become “very frustrating” if one kept wishing one
could eat.
Abed Succar, who runs Eugene Limousines, says he misses
hearing the call to prayer, the azaan, especially during Ramadan
in Eugene. Succar, from Lebanon, is accustomed to hearing the
azaan sound out over city rooftops five times a day. The other
Muslims gathered at the mosque after Friday prayers nod under-
standingly at Succar’s words.
Ramadan, to a great extent, becomes a time of family and
community. Work schedules during Ramadan in Muslim coun-
tries are often regulated, sometimes shortened, by fasting and
prayer times. In a place like Eugene, many Muslims miss this nat-
ural slowing down of the day and its opportunity to mingle with
others.
Hasnah Toran yearns for it. Toran pursues her doctorate and
works two part-time jobs while her husband stays home with their
daughter and autistic son. Defying all stereotypes, Toran adopted
the headscarf at age 14, wearing it while backpacking cross-coun-
try and across Europe alone as a teenager.
Toran’s hectic schedule in Eugene means she longs for the so-
cial atmosphere of her Malaysian village, especially during
Ramadan. Sometimes, she breaks her fast in class with a cereal
bar or fruit juice. She recalls a day she was so busy she forgot to
bring a snack for iftar, staying hungry during sunset and feeling
miserable on the bus home.
Toran would like time for taraweeh (the evening Ramadan
prayer) and family meals. “God wants you to take time to make
connections with people around you,” she says. “But how can you
do that with a deadline the next day?”
Come the end of November, Muslims in Eugene will com-
memorate more than Thanksgiving. The next new crescent sig-
nals the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid-ul-Fitr, three
days celebrating a month of self-restraint. Though Ramadan may
be over, as Abdullah Al-Heymare says, your conscience will fast
the rest of the year.
ew
he diverse Eugene Muslim community often acts as
an extended family, filling any voids during this so-
cial month. It also finds itself “doing a whole lot of
talking this time of year,” says Kalizya Hutchinson, a UO grad
student and member of the UO Muslim Student Association.
The MSA holds a potluck iftar every Thursday at
4.45 pm at the EMU Skylight, and invites everyone to
“Break the Fast with Muslims,” an educational event featur-
ing iftar and a speaker on Ramadan’s significance. This
event is from 4:30 to 6:30 pm Nov. 12 at the EMU Fir Room.
The Islamic Cultural Center, led by Tammam and Pat Adi,
organizes frequent potluck iftars, open to all interested par-
ties. The As-Siddiq mosque also holds daily iftars at its prem-
ises. —KJS
T
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n Abu Dhabi nobody is ever more than a five-minute
walk from a masjid and the Call to Prayer echoes
across the city five times a day, beginning with the
earliest call just before sunrise.
Come evening, Abu Dhabi
livens up and the streets are
full of traffic. The city’s many
taxis are even busier than
usual. Trying to find a taxi
late at night can be difficult
— and I am not talking about
Eugene, Oregon, difficult. This
is like New York City at its busiest.
At 2 am I go to my terrace, which
overlooks the Corniche, the eight-lane road that runs
along the harbor wall. Looking out over the Arabian Gulf
gives me a great perspective on this month’s activities. It
is almost impossible to describe the effect of fasting dur-
ing the day and the nightly religious and family celebra-
tions.
Working at a major university where all the students
are Muslims presents many challenges and new opportu-
nities to learn things I didn’t know in the States. I have a
Ramadan nurse to help with students, and sometimes
faculty, who are tired and weak, pass out because they
have been fasting.
Our working hours are shortened to 9 am to 3 pm.
While Muslims are not allowed to eat, drink, or smoke,
non-Muslims are allowed to do these things, but only be-
hind closed doors and certainly not where they can be
seen. Doing any of these things in public would give great
offence and the consequences are grave.
As a sign of respect for their Muslim colleagues’ be-
liefs, some non-Muslim staff choose to fast (or at least
give up smoking!) during working hours. Some Western
companies have taken advantage of the Holy Month with
“Ramadan special” fried chicken and other delights.
During Ramadan the many freedoms that Westerners
enjoy in the UAE are restricted, with bars closed, liquor
stores shut (these are officially for non-Muslims only),
and we are warned to be especially careful about our
dress and behavior.
Whether it is in the hustle and bustle of Dubai, the
quieter streets of Abu Dhabi or the desert garden of Al
Ain, the UAE has offered me a chance to learn and gain
some insight into a culture very different from my own.
During Ramadan, I and other Westerners have the oppor-
tunity to learn respect for the religious faith that has sus-
tained the people of the Emirates for a thousand years. ■
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NOVEMBER 6, 2003 13