What family I do have in the United States lives on the other side of the country, in California, and I only occasionally speak to my family spread across the Middle East—in Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Palestine—and rarely visit them. Iftars for me were spent with my parents and siblings at the dinner table, the sound of Arabic soap operas blaring from the TV making us feel like we were in familiar company.
And yet even without a robust community, Ramadan was and is a joyous time for my family, and part of my frustration with my non-Muslim peers was that they didn’t understand that. What they seemed to focus on was the hardship of fasting, but they never appreciated the joy and reward of breaking the fast each night with delicious food.
Where we’d all sit and eat together; and of the sound of vivacious aunts who spoke in exactly the same way the soap opera actors recited their lines on the TV we’d leave on to make our iftars less lonely. (What can I say? Arabs are dramatic.)
