The drums of Ramadan

One unrelated thing I keep forgetting to tell all of you about is the Ramadan drum guy. Barbara, I’m sure, knows about it, but the rest of you don’t. Every morning during the month of Ramadan, all over Turkey, a man comes through your neighborhood at about 3:30 a.m. to remind everybody to wake up and eat breakfast, so they won’t be too hungry during the day, when, of course, the faithful fast, if they aren’t too old or too sick.

I’ve told you all about my first morning in Turkey, Sept. 12, 2001, when I woke to the call of the muezzin, and realized I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. It was my first love-pang for Turkey. Well, in spite of many wonderful adventures since then, including the greatest one, named Lute, I’d have to say the first morning I was awakened by the drum guy was on a par with the first enchantment. I didn’t know what to expect. What I didn’t expect was a man in a suit, with a big tom-tom strapped to his shoulder, banging out a very attractive rhythmic drum solo, walking down the street to the castle and pausing every few feet to make sure we heard him. He wouldn’t actually come down our little street, because of the dogs, but he made sure we all heard. The people at the far end of our street got him from the other cross-street.

People are starting to complain, of course, as Turks become more “sophisticated,” with alarms on their cell phones, clocks, computers, ad nauseum, but I don’t see the custom dying before I do.

There are even multi-generational drum-beaters, and they are very proud of their work. You can see them at the train stations, mostly coming in from the East, with their families and their own food, sitting in groups and eating and drinking tea, waiting for their assignments. When Ramadan is over, they collect their pay, and then they re-group to return to their homes for what’s left of Eid al-Fitr, the three-day festival after the month of fasting.

As most of you know, I am not a dawn person, and I certainly don’t get out of bed for an hour or two after. But boy, I was up to look at the drummer guy every morning that I heard him, filled with absolute enchantment, almost a weird yearning. He was so much, so completely, alone, marching down the street, beating his wonderful big drum, with, of course, a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Hearty man!

Reading this now, it sounds so naïve. That was the first and last time I ever heard the Ramadan drums. The year after, 2008, apparently the same man came for a morning or two, but I didn’t hear him, and he didn’t come after that at all that year.

There were two stories, both of which are probably true. One was that he over-slept one morning, and was too ashamed to come back. The other was that on the few mornings he made it, people yelled at him to stop the noise. The year before, when I was waxing rhapsodic over sharing such a wonderfully Turkish experience, it turned out that when he went around at the end of Eid for his tips, several people not only didn’t tip him but told him not to come back.

The second year after, the muhtar had the money to pay for him, but it seems he wouldn’t come back, the muhtar waited too long to find a replacement or he bowed to the complainers, because there was no drummer that year at all. I followed this issue as best I could, in Turkish English-language papers, as well as talking to villagers around here, who seemed to know nothing about it, except for the muhtar.

I remember reading about a mayor in some big town on the Mediterranean who was proud to say the drummers had been banned from his municipality indefinitely because of the horrible noise they made. I read other stories of how this reaction was happening all over Turkey. Yet in other articles, I read of arrivals from the East of whole families come to Haydarpaşa, having meals on the train platforms in the middle of the night, ready to go to their assigned areas and perform their Ramadan magic. The writers of the articles seemed confident and proud of Turkey’s loyalty to its beloved traditions, sharing many memories of Ramadan drummers with their readers.

So my heart was broken, became confused, got incensed, and then finally got tired of hurting and hardened. One more little dream of old Turkey gone. If I had gotten here a year later, I never would have had that part of my soul opened to the magic of proud men plying their ancient trade, alone in the pre-dawn, knowing their brothers were doing the same all over Turkey, for the 30 days of Ramadan. As it is, I dread the coming of the holy month, feeling cheated and yet somehow at fault, as if I should have fought harder to regain the little man in the suit for my village, although what I could have done, I can’t think. One bad part about being a perpetual guest is the lack of standing in the culture arena. I mean, if Muslim mayors and muhtars and populations don’t want them, what right has a yabancı non-Muslim to complain?

But somewhere, in my heart of hearts, the un-hardened part, that little man in the suit, proudly banging out the call to rise and eat something against the fasting-pangs of the day to come, wearing his suit and smoking his cigarette, will live on forever.