Most of us spent the second half of the night awake. We rearranged our working hours so as not to be late for the invitation to iftar. We rediscovered the ways of the bakeries and the best restaurants in our cities. We redefined the meaning of light. On regular days sunlight reminds us it's the time to start doing something, on Ramadan mornings it reminded us of stopping eating and drinking. On regular days sunset meant a drop in mental and physical activities, on Ramadan evenings it meant the beginning of a new life.Ramadan changed our relationship to time and space. But it also changed -- or reset -- our relationships with our relatives. We visited our parents and friends that we have forgotten for so long. We prayed for our colleagues. We arranged iftar dinners to come together with our neighbors. We went out to help the poor and the needy. We visited elderly people in nursing homes.
The change reached its maximum in the day before Eid al-Fitr, the Ramadan Bayramı. The three-day holiday following the month-long fasting changed our relationship to life and death. We visited cemeteries and tombs. We prayed for the souls of the departed and the fallen. And soon after the holiday we returned to our normal lives.
Ramazan Bayramı was special for me because it changed my relationship with my past and my memories. My close friend Dr. Fatih Adıbelli, with whom I shared some of my best memories in Jerusalem, came to visit me -- and of course İstanbul -- for the holiday. We have been in touch since the time we both left Jerusalem, but communication is not like coming together. In the meantime both of us got married, and the Adıbelli family contributed to the world's population by one cute daughter.
Together, we visited both the famous shopping centers and the famous tombs of İstanbul. That is the soul of Ramazan Bayramı, and that fit Dr. Adıbelli so well: living as if we will never die, and keeping death in our minds as if it is the most imminent reality of our lives. İstanbul hosts some of the most venerated saints of Muslim history. Religious people refer to Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, whose tomb gives the Eyüp district its name, as the spiritual guardian of İstanbul. Yahya Efendi, whose tomb is in Beşiktaş, is regarded as the guardian of the Bosporus and fishermen, whereas Aziz Mahmud Hüdai, referred to as the “sultan of the sultans” since the early Ottoman sultans revered him so much, an eternal resident of Üsküdar, is known to be a spiritual guardian against drowning and death under a fallen wall. At a hilltop near Beykoz is the tomb of Yuşa (Joshua, the son of Nun), the prophet. There one can read the Quranic story of Moses and Joshua traveling to a strait between two seas (reportedly İstanbul) to meet the legendary man of wisdom, Hızır, a Muslim parallel of the Christian St. George.
We visited all these places of concentrated holiness. We also visited those places of concentrated materialism; the shopping centers.
Ramazan Bayramı changed our relationship to life and death; to time and space; to past and present. İstanbul will never be the pre-Ramazan İstanbul for me. It is now the city where I traveled with a good friend and his family. It is now the city where I discovered the delicate relationship between our personal memoirs and the collective memories of the cities we live in. It is now the city where I discovered, once again, that fasting is not about halting our eating habits, but about waiting for others to start eating together. Now I know that fasting is not only about our own hunger but about the hunger of others, the ones who are hungry all year round.
Thanks to Dr. Fatih who, knowingly or unknowingly, reminded me of the fact that I have hundreds of friends that I should have invited or visited for Ramazan Bayramı. And special thanks to my wife, who drove us all around İstanbul, from material to spiritual and back.
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