“We never spent iftar with less than 10 people. It was always full.”
Linda came to the United States as a refugee from Kosovo when she was a child. She went back later in her life and got to experience Ramadan back home. Every night was a full house of warmth and community.
“During Ramadan in Kosovo, all your neighbors, even people you meet on the streets, will invite you for iftar. There would be so many people,” she remembered. “There would be mismatched tables, one shorter, one taller than the other, and mismatched chairs, just so we could make space for everyone, and some people would sit on the floor.”
Linda remembered the hectic but fun time spent preparing food in a crowded kitchen. “In the kitchen, you have 10 women at once cooking, and since all of us are fasting, we can’t taste the food. So we would have kids tasting the food to tell us if it needs more salt,” she laughed.
She recalled fond memories of waiting to break fast in her grandparents home. “It was, alhamdulillah, so nice because where we lived it’s a very old, cobblestone street, and when it was time for iftar, we would hear three adhans calling, echoing on top of each other at the same time. So we didn’t need the apps on our phones to look at the times, we would just hear it.”
Even before iftar, when you’re walking down the streets, you see people closing down their shops, getting ready,” she said, remembering seeing old Ottoman masjids.
“Tradition,” she said, “is to break fast with water and something sweet.” There would be dates, but dates are a luxury in Kosovo, so there would also be figs and luquma, or Turkish Delight. After offering prayer, every dinner would begin with a different type of soup, and end with Turkish coffee or Turkish tea.
“The atmosphere is…you feel it more,” she said. “I miss being so crowded in one room.”
Islamic Relief USA is delivering food packages to 30 countries in the world this Ramadan. They wanted to capture what Ramadan feels like in each of those countries, so they talked to 30 people living in the United States about their experiences fasting there.
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