Marrakech: Ramadan In the 45 Degree Heat

: NORA FITZGERALD; 08/26/12

Marrakech / Morocco News Board--- Ramadan has left us for another year…so sad to see it go, although it was a tough one. For all of us in Marrakech, having day upon day of intense heat, hardly ever dipping under 45 degrees, well let’s just say it was a Ramadan to separate the men from the boys. When we go outside in that heat, simply breathing becomes a laborious task, struggling to draw a breath like one struggles to draw water from a well. It made most of us do as little as possible.

And that is hard too. Not only do you give up your food and your water, but also your sense of pride in any accomplishment. I barely walked this Ramadan, let alone worked out. I had high hopes of reorganizing parts of my home, re-stacking the books in the bookshelf, clearing out the little storage room, but had to just let all that go. It was a “being” month, not a “doing” month. I’d never thought of Ramadan that way, but this one took me to a new place, a difficult place.

With Ramadan coming 11 days earlier every year, I’ve fasted short days in winter, cool fall days where we all say to each other “I don’t feel thirsty or hungry at all, it’s like I’m barely fasting”, and more recently, the relentless summer heat. Whereas Ramadans before this were like a cool stream running over me, cleansing and calming, this one was like being in the pounding surf, with nothing to do but hold on. And yet, this Ramadan had the most potential for transformation. When else do we get a chance for everything in our life and world to change? When else do we get a chance to explore our limitations in such a painfully real way? Our city, Marrakech, had record high temperatures this year, and yet the feeling of all of us fasting together made it all the more wonderful. When you go out, you see people with wet towels on their heads, you see someone with a hose offering the service of drenching anyone who needs it, you read it in people’s faces. There is such a feeling of camaraderie under these circumstances of duress. It’s not the month of spiritual devotion I imagined for myself, the heat made it difficult to do as many prayers and reading of the Quran as I’d hoped, and yet I found goodness and blessing in the intensity of it, the bending of my every desire and hope into this giving up and letting go.

Ramadan is a month where Muslims are content to be fully Muslims. We are reminded everywhere of our aspirations towards God; charity increases, mosques overflow with worshipers, even the radio stations start to play devotional music of all kinds: Berber, Gnawa, Andalusian, Nasheed. The instruments and melodies vary greatly, but the words don’t, “La ilaha illa Allah… Mohamed habibullah… There is no god but God…Muhammad is a beloved of God”.

When I am fasting my thought process slows down, although often my thoughts are clearer and deeper. But I become incapable of multi-tasking, especially right around the time of breaking fast. One day my husband and I broke our fast with a date and water, and then went inside a mosque to pray the sunset prayer (maghrib). As I was praying I became aware that my purse was not by my side. As soon as the prayer ended, I started to look for it, and realized that I had taken off my shoes at the door, but instead of leaving my shoes on the doorstep and taking my purse inside, I’d done the opposite. Of course, I don’t expect anyone to steal my purse from a mosque doorstep in Ramadan, yet I was relieved to see it there, because I had stashed both my husband’s wallet and my own, our phones and the keys to the car in it. Honestly…

As I said before, I don’t feel like I “did” enough this Ramadan, but still I hung my hopes on the saying “A moment of sincerity can purify the heart” or something to that effect. Luckily I wasn’t left to my own devices in this respect. So blessed that in Marrakech people really turn out for Laylat al Qadr, the Night of Power, which is the best night of Ramadan, maybe of the whole year. This is the night when Archangel Gabriel spoke the first words of the blessed Quran to Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him. The Quran says that prayer during this night is better than a thousand months of worship. We don’t know when this night is exactly, only that it’s one of the last ten nights of Ramadan. The only real way to know is to sense it, and to stay in a quiet enough state that if it were that night, you could feel something different and special about it.

In Moroccan Islamic culture, most people generally accept the 27th night as Laylat al Qadr, and so it’s celebrated with special food and whatnot, which I don’t particularly care about¸ because really, it’s a night for prayer and I don’t care if I’m eating couscous or beldi chicken or whatever. If you must know, I made lasagna that night and I can assure you that’s not traditional Moroccan. What’s really great about that night is that the mosques don’t stop prayers all night long. So it wasn’t that unusual that a friend of mine picked us up, me and my daughter, at 1:30 a.m. and we headed for the Koutoubia mosque, where we joined a good 50 000 people in prayer. Every mosque was the same, full inside and out onto the streets, all night long.

The prayers were beautiful, as they always are there, and ended in a long, soulful supplication. Among the words that stayed with me are these: “oh Lord here we are, among us are young and old, male and female, healthy and sick, obedient and transgressors, have mercy on us all…Don’t deny hands that are outstretched to You in supplication, don’t deny hearts that yearn for You”. (Now I wish I had recorded it somehow to share with others that weren’t there but wanted to hear it). At one point the Imam breaks down in tears and can barely speak, and I think, here is someone who has spent all of Ramadan leading thousands of people in prayer both at night and before dawn, he has spent his entire Ramadan in an amazing state, and here he is in tears imploring God to have mercy on his soul. And what of me? And that was the moment I had waited for all of Ramadan, the breaking point. And I think that’s all I can say about that because my words aren’t sufficient.

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Comments (2)

-3 #1 RE: Marrakech: Ramadan In the 45 Degree Heat — mbt 2012-08-26 15:34

This Ramadhan of all Ramadhan I too feel I had not done enough to worship THE ALMIGHTY, if it is not the distraction of kids then it is the distractions from 101 things that demands our time to the exclusion of the time to worship.

But I am determine InshaAllah that I will make up during the next 11 months, and InshaAllah be ready for the next Ramadhan so that I can devote more time to ALLAH SWT.

Ameen to the supplication by the Imam.

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+1 #2 I Experienced Laylat al Qadr — Expat in Maroc 2012-09-13 22:36

We were in a rented furnished apartment during Ramadan in 2006. Shortly after the end of Ramadan, I was on the balcony of the apartment, sometime between the maghrib and ishr prayers and suddenly, the whole sky became illuminated - for around 20 seconds and then returned to normal.

See, God is the God of everybody - not just of the Muslims. God can and reveal His power to whom and when He chooses.

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