Being Embraced by Ramzaan

کُن فَیَکون

The beginning of April 2022 brought with it bittersweet anticipation for many Muslims around the world. On one hand, it marked the beginning of an in-person Ramzaan, bringing observing communities physically together after a two-year hiatus. On the other, it reminded many of spending the holiest month in Islam with the losses they incurred since Winter 2020—whether those losses were family, friends, jobs, or opportunities. COVID-19 uprooted community foundations and left many lonely; people were fasting while isolated at home, breaking fast alone, and unable to attend nightly prayers shoulder-to-shoulder with their kin. How can one feel showered in faith when secluded from those who reinforce that confidence? Does it come from within?

I found myself engulfed by these troubling questions when April 1st appeared on my calendar this year. I already was struggling with feeling the blessings of Ramzaan in the years prior to COVID-19. After Summer 2017, I found myself alone in a city bigger than I could fathom. My graduate school friends (Muslim or not) who had observed with me had moved on to other careers around the world, which I celebrated. I started working my first “adult” job that Fall, where the most intense time of work year fell in sync with the month of fasting. I would come home emotionally exhausted, break my fast, make my prayers, and go to sleep.

That pattern carried on for three years, each year more detached than before. I was restless, wondering where the nights spent in spiritual, tearful prostration went. Why didn’t qawwalis that made me feel loved strike me anymore? Why wasn’t my soul as open as it was before? Why wasn’t I taken in with burdens ridden along my spine, like the scales of a dragon, and why didn’t I feel lighter when put back out? It was as if each blow my body and mind had taken in the liminal time between each Ramzaan compounded, building up pressure with no release.

When the pandemic finally hit, I was a husk performing religious rites without feeling my heart beat to their motions. In 2020, I spent so much time washing my hands, wearing a mask, wiping down groceries, and cloistered, I didn’t even realize the month was passing by. I instead watched death tolls rise, anxiously checked in on my father (an elderly ER physician), and anticipated every certainty around me to fold in a time of doubt. That paradoxical feeling of controlling everything while not having any control continued for two years.

So, when Ramzaan popped up this year, I was caught by a blasé, defeated surprise. Another year had collected its weighted tributes on my back. I envisioned the same despair of my faith slipping away from my erratically grasping hands as I made my breakfast before fajr prayer. I thought of all I had lost, all my loved ones had lost, and what awaited before us in the coming month. I had enough of dunyā’s harm on my being.

That’s when it clicked.

I wasn’t letting myself be embraced by Ramzaan. I had spent the last five years of my life trying to control every aspect of my emotional, professional, spiritual, and physical growth. The tolls of worldly existence—taxes, bills, groceries, clothes, work—they all fogged my vision in faith. I didn’t relinquish the reins to forces too powerful for my navigation. That habit was exacerbated by forced (and justified) isolation in the wake of a pandemic. Everything became dunyā—would I have a job tomorrow? Is my father wearing his PPE correctly?

In this past half month, when I felt I had absolutely nothing left to give and finally gave slack to my grasp at the helm, faith found me. Ramzaan warmed me; qawwalis made sense; dua’a came naturally. I became me again—the me who made fasting prayers during college summer classes, soon breaking fast with friends. The me who recorded Ramzaan with her camera to look fondly back on. The me who could sit alone with some surahs and feel at peace.

That was my five-year Ramzaan lesson. I can’t control everything. I just needed faith.