17th wheeling at Heavenly Desserts
Love, lust, and loneliness in Ramzan
This week, for the last week of Ramzan/Ramadan, I’m delighted to be handing over to Burhan for story time on romance and intimacy during Ramzan. I’ll let him take it from here!
Hello. I’m not Anisah. One thing we have in common is a love of writing and, like Anisah, I’ve written a lot about tech (and science, or climate). But, unlike Anisah, never anything personal. So this is an interesting challenge. And I’m diving straight into the deep end writing about love and intimacy (far from my comfort zone of coding fun side projects), and how they manifest in Ramzan — a special time for Muslims worldwide.
I don’t want to assume any prior knowledge from you so a very quick Ramzan primer: Ramzan (or, as it’s called in Arabic, Ramadan1) is a hugely significant month in the Islamic calendar. Muslims spend Ramzan fasting — abstaining from food, water, and sex during the days — and, generally, trying to avoid sinful acts. It’s a time of increased prayer, charity (my favourite new fact is that on average British Muslims donate four times as much as the average Briton, most of which happens in Ramzan), contemplation, and deep spirituality. It’s also a good time to see friends and family, and can be the highlight of a social calendar.
I’m not a spiritual person so, for me, it’s more of the latter. A typical Ramzan has me spending 20+ evenings in the mosque, or with friends at Iftars2. This isn’t unique to me — all over the world Muslims come together to break their fasts and pray. Mosques tend to be at their busiest. Both the traditional and the newer Muslim third spaces are heaving: dessert parlours, chai shops, halal food joints are all full of people coming together to celebrate.
Romance, love, sex, and intimacy are still present in Ramzan but they take on a distinct hue. Ramzan’s cultural, spiritual, logistical, and religious inertia changes how Muslims live their lives for these 30 days. As Muslims together, it becomes the best time of the year to meet new people.
Muslims generally don’t talk about love or sex. We can be a pretty judgemental group. And fractious. The halal-haram ratio seems to be a distinctly Muslim experience. Every time you meet a new Muslim you need to figure out how close their halal-haram ratio matches yours, and that impacts how open you can be with them. It also shapes our lived experiences. I’ve been partaking in Ramzan for close to two decades now but my lived experiences of Ramzan (in aggregate, beyond just love and romance) will be hugely different from the hafiz aspiring to lead prayers (for non-Muslim readers, take this to mean someone very pious). My experiences might be representative for some, or for everyone, or for nobody at all. But, in the interest of starting a conversation, I’ve decided to share a few moments from the close to 600 days of Ramzan I’ve seen come and go.
My own story with love, like many others, starts in my awkward teenage years. I spent a lot of time thinking about girls and sex. As most teenagers do, I suspect. Now, you may be wondering how this pertains to Ramzan, which is a fair question. I went to a boys’ school, so obviously there weren’t very many girls around me. We did have a girls’ school down the road, with whom the student body shared some extra-curricular (and extra curricular) activities but it wasn’t much. This was also the era of the house party but, as the only sober person, I spent more time helping my overly drunken compatriots throw up in the garden, than trying to get with people. This meant Ramzan was really the first chance teenage me had to meet girls; in particular, Muslim girls. This probably isn’t a staggering revelation for anybody reading this, but it was for teenage me. And, as you can guess, I was very late to the party. Before realising that Ramzan could be the answer to my love life, I spent the time between prayers playing Pokémon in the back of the mosque. The cooler and more adventurous of my friends were furtively meeting girls in the back stairwell, hoping to not be seen by any uncles and aunties. Eventually, I started to grow up and take a bit more of an interest. I remember the charged looks across the lobby, or in the lockers, or in any other inch of communal space (caveat: I was the one doing the looking rather than being looked at as my glow-up happened much later in life!). We would notice the packs of girls, figure out which ones of them were the most interesting, and try to be noticed (but, obviously, were too afraid to make direct eye contact).
Who needed eye contact though when you had BBM3? Really the highs of dating etiquette. You’d discreetly ask for pins (or go via mutual friends), and show girls you were interested with the classic BBM ping spam: you’d put your phone on aeroplane mode, send 10+ pings in one go, and then turn off aeroplane mode. All while hoping that chats weren’t screen munched. It still brings back fond memories. You didn’t want anybody to know about your interests or chats, but some people knowing made it a bit cooler — teenage dating was, of course, performative in parts. And it was always a source of jokes and banter. This was a universal constant. I remember one friend telling a girl after prayers that she looked beautiful that night. Somehow the entire group found out, and it was the topic of conversation for the next few days. Sitting next to a pretty girl’s dad in prayers would provide enough material to fill the next few evenings. Me, bragging to my friends that I had a chance. My friends, shooting me down or reminding me that sitting next to her dad is not an effective chirpse4 strategy. I think everyone secretly wanted to be noticed as a pillar of the community. Hands up if you’ve ever volunteered to help out with something just to win enough cultural cachet for your crush’s parents to mention you as that ‘helpful young man’ to her.
Ramzan drifts through the Gregorian calendar, moving forward by about ten days every year (as we follow a Lunar calendar), and this has fun implications based on when it falls. For example, our high school prom fell in Ramzan and this clash raised some awkward questions. I had to call my date’s dad — my first time ever speaking to him, mind — and ask permission for his daughter to miss Iftar with the family to come with me to prom, which my school had decided to host in a central London night club (what better way for a bunch of 17-18 year olds to celebrate the end of our adolescence?). Again, boys school — she wouldn’t have been invited otherwise, so I really was the sole reason for her missing prayers that night. Permission granted, our prom night proceeded as planned. At 3am (before our pre-booked cabs took us back to suburbia) we cashed in all of our drink tokens for as much water as possible, frantically trying to rehydrate after a night of awkward slow dancing. And we still managed to both get home before sunrise. Despite how it sounds, we kept it very halal.
Looking back now, this is the part of Ramzan I miss the most. The naive optimism, coupled with the awkwardness of young love, and the sheer excitement we all had. The feelings of joy (and jealousy) when someone managed to get a girl’s number. The gossiping and whispering and debriefing. The fun and the drama.
After uni, I finally gained the social skills to actually ask people out during Ramzan. Obviously not to their faces at the mosque, God forbid. Direct approaches were never an option. Social media/messenger (RIP BBM) were still the MO.
But a Ramzan date is risky. Firstly, not being able to eat or drink anything really limits your options. Good luck having a romantic walk in the park when you’re both hungry and not able to drink water. Iftar dates (pardon the pun) were the main option. Secondly, reputational risk is a concern. Iftar dates might make sense but that’s also when other Muslims are out and about. You don’t wanna be on a first date with a girl and have her older brother see you. Especially when her family thinks she’s with friends. I remember picking date locations which were further away, to limit the odds of being seen. Thirdly, Ramzan itself affects our view of intimacy on dates. We are on our best behaviour. I remember an ex-girlfriend telling me we shouldn’t kiss during the day as that would break our fast. Some Muslim readers may argue that you shouldn’t be kissing anybody who isn’t your spouse, Ramzan or not. But Ramzan’s religious significance (and the guilt that can come with it) is hard to explain. And its rules are not for me to get into right now. I’m sure there are Muslims who wouldn’t sleep with their partners (non-spouses) in Ramzan, even if they were okay doing it throughout the rest of the year. Material for a different article.
The uncles and aunties at my mosque were aware of these covert operations, and figured the best thing to do would be to bring everything into the light. A few years ago, they tried to organise a singles mixer, where young men and women ended up standing awkwardly in groups, eating dates with Yemeni coffee, making small talk under the watchful gaze of an army of chaperones. The tension of our earlier furtive glances was long gone. This was more like a bad networking event.
More recently, the Ramzan vibe has changed once again. I’m now the last single one in my group. The rest are happily married. The Ramzan motives (restaurants, dessert shops, someone’s house between prayers) have changed. Instead of booking for nine, we now book for seventeen. I don’t generally mind being the 17th wheel, but in Ramzan it tends to sting a bit more. Every evening after prayers, I see my friends scanning the mosque lobby to make eye contact with their wives across the room, before heading out. Whereas I end up walking out on my own. Their Ramzan experiences have changed. They (and I) would say for the better. Many muslims say getting married is completing one half of your Deen (faith/religion). They definitely spend a lot less time in Ramzan thinking about girls (at least, I’d hope so), and a lot more time focusing on actual prayer. But, being the 17th wheel once a month is fine. Being reminded of it everyday for 30 days is less fun: the loneliness feels far more acute. Ramzan is a time for contemplation and gratitude though, so I don’t begrudge my friends their happiness, and I’m grateful for having them. But a lot of the group dynamic has been lost, and I don’t think it’ll ever come back.
Love and intimacy are complex enough as is. Ramzan adds another dimension. I’ve spent most of my life navigating it, and every year the experience changes. I do miss the furtive corridor glances that I feel too old for now. I miss sitting in a group with my friends after Iftar, crowded over someone’s phone, looking at a girl’s Instagram profile, and planning out what to say to her.
So I’m trying to use this time to focus on me, and figure out what I want. I’m taking a break from Hinge, Muzz, and all of the biodatas. I don’t want to spend these 30 days trying to fix the loneliness with meaningless swiping. And it’s nice to give my thumb a break.
But I don’t know what the future holds nor do I know what future Ramzans will be like. Maybe this time next year we’ll have to book for 18 people in our post mosque dessert shop motive. Or maybe I’ll still be attending singles mixers trying to find the one. (If someone from Hinge/Raya/Muzz is reading this please give me a free pro subscription).
Ramzan is a time for prayer and contemplation. For the audacity of hope. So let’s see what the future brings.
in Arabic, the month is called Ramadan. In Farsi, the Arabic letter ﺽ (like a dh sound) is pronounced with a z instead. The Persian influence carried over into the Indian subcontinent and parts of central Asia. I prefer Ramzan — I see the Desi tinges to the Islam I grew up with as a feature, not a bug.
The first meal after sunset, when we break our fasts
BlackBerry Messenger, for the uninitiated
London chat to flirt or chat up!