Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout: Poetry for Ramadan

In most of the Islamic world Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim Calendar, and will begin today at sundown. The date is calculated by the first sighting of the crescent after the New Moon. Since this can vary in different parts of the world, so can the marked beginning of the month. In the United States the western calendar date is April.

Ramadan was the month in which the first verses of the In most of the Islamic world Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim Calendar, and will begin today at sundown. The date is calculated by the first sighting of the crescent after the New Moon. Since this can vary in different parts of the world, so can the marked beginning of the month. In the United States the western calendar date is April.

Ramadan was the month in which the first verses of the Qur’an were revealed to the Prophet Mohammad.

The month of cleansing as the faithful rededicate themselves to Allah by emphasizing patience, humility, and spirituality by an absolute fast observed by all Muslims over the age of puberty each day between dawn and dusk. The observant are also called to be more reverent and fervent in prayer. During Ramadan the entire Qur’an is often read in mosques in 30 installments.

Customs connected to the Ramadan observance vary somewhat culturally and between Sunni and Shi’a traditions. In more secular Islamic countries evenings after the fast are often filled with feasting and entertainment, while attendance to evening services following a modest breaking of the fast is customary in more traditional societies. Acts of charity to the poor are encouraged.

The holiday of Eid-al-Fitr marks the end of the fasting period of Ramadan and the first day of the following month, after another new moon has been sighted, 29 or 30 days after the onset of Ramadan. This is the most festive of Islamic holidays and is marked by the donning of new clothes, feasting, and family gatherings.

There is a rich tradition of poetry in both Arabic speaking societies and in Iran, formerly Persia which is the spiritual center of Shi’a Islam. Poets have been considered to have a special duty to speak to social and moral conditions and to hold rulers to the high standards of Allah. While they are often revered by the masses they are often harassed, imprisoned, or even killed by unamused religious and state authorities.

Fathima Zahra is an Indian poet based in Essex. She is a Roundhouse Poetry Collective alum and BBC 1Xtra Words First participant. Her poems have been published Khidr Zine, Tentacular Magazine, and SLAM! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This, her debut short collection was issued by ignitionpress in 2021. In 2019 she was the first-prize winner of the British Moon Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network third-prize winner in the Golden Shovel Challenge.

Nii Parkes, a judge of the British Moon Poetry Challenge had this to say about her prize-winning poem:

Ramadan, 2019 is a remarkably deceptive poem, simple but complex powered by an imagination that subverts hierarchy while being playful e.g. the idea of scholars pasting – an activity that infants indulge in at nursery, the Adhan going off on phones. It also brings to mind similarly titled poems that refer to war e.g. W.B. Yeats’ Easter 1916 and the famous Christmas 1914 truce, but here a gunshot pulls “smiles out of the closet strutting in their Eid clothes.”

Ramadan, 2019

We stalk the moon all month round, lick

our lips, till the Adhan goes off on our phones,

dig our teeth into the soft flesh of dates, wash

it down with Roohafza, rinse and repeat. The

scholars paste their eyes to the sky, the crowds

trade their eyeballs for telescopes, watch the

moon turn bashful, wait for henna stains

to appear, a gunshot signal to pull our smiles

out of the closet strutting in their Eid clothes.

—Fathima Zahra

Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish was born on March 13, 1941 in al-Birwa in Galilee, a village that was occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Because they had missed the official Israeli census, Darwish and his family were considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens.” Darwish lived for many years in exile in Beirut and Paris. He was the author of over 30 books of poetry, eight books of prose, and earned the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation, the Lenin Peace Prize, and the Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres Medal from France.

In the 1960s Darwish was imprisoned for reciting poetry and traveling between villages without a permit. Considered a resistance poet, he was placed under house arrest when his poem Identity Card was turned into a protest song. After spending a year at a university in Moscow in 1970, Darwish worked at the newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo. He subsequently lived in Beirut, where he edited the journal Palestinian Affairs from 1973 to 1982. In 1981 he founded and edited the journal Al-Karmel. Darwish served from 1987 to 1993 on the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1996 he was permitted to return from exile to visit friends and family in Israel and Palestine.

Mahmoud Darwish’s early work of the 1960s and 1970s reflected his unhappiness with the occupation of his native land. Carolyn Forché and Runir Akash noted in their introduction to Unfortunately It Was Paradise in 2003 that “as much as [Darwish] is the voice of the Palestinian Diaspora, he is the voice of the fragmented soul.” They noted for his 20th volume of verse, Mural:

Assimilating centuries of Arabic poetic forms and applying the chisel of modern sensibility to the richly veined ore of its literary past, Darwish subjected his art to the impress of exile and to his own demand that the work remain true to itself, independent of its critical or public reception.”

Mahmoud Darwish died in 2008 in Houston, Texas.

In Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love

and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How

do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?

Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?

I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see

no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.

All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly

then I become another. Transfigured. Words

sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger

mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”

I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white

biblical rose. And my hands like two doves

on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.

I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,

transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?

I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I

think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad

spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”

Then what? A woman soldier shouted:

Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?

I said: You killed me ... and I forgot, like you, to die.

—Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Fady Joudah

Kazim Ali is a British born Muslim of Indian descent. Educated in the United States with a B.A. from University of Albany-SUNY, and an MFA from New York University. Ali’s poetry collections include The Far Mosque (2005), The Fortieth Day (2008), Sky Ward (2013), and Inquisition (2018). Today’s selection, Ramadan, comes from The Fortieth Day.

Ramadan

You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches,

and have to choose between the starving month’s

nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings.

The liturgy begins to echo itself and why does it matter?

If the ground-water is too scarce one can stretch nets

into the air and harvest the fog.

Hunger opens you to illiteracy,

thirst makes clear the starving pattern,

the thick night is so quiet, the spinning spider pauses,

the angel stops whispering for a moment—

The secret night could already be over,

you will have to listen very carefully—

You are never going to know which night’s mouth is sacredly reciting

and which night’s recitation is secretly mere wind—

—Kazim Ali were revealed to the Prophet Mohammad.

Fathima Zahro reading at a British poetry event.

Fathima Zahra is an Indian poet based in Essex. She is a Roundhouse Poetry Collective alum and BBC 1Xtra Words First participant. Her poems have been published Khidr Zine, Tentacular Magazine, and SLAM! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This, her debut short collection was issued by ignitionpress in 2021. In 2019 she was the first-prize winner of the British Moon Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network third-prize winner in the Golden Shovel Challenge.