The first Ramadans in a child's perception

The news that Ramadan was approaching used to spread through the city long beforehand through the organization of the mélédé, but its beginning would be completed with the tarawih prayer performed at the hours when the lit mélédé was beginning to die down. For us as children, tarawih meant play and fun. Whether it was so in all the mosques I was not in a position to follow, of course, but the Sheikh Maruf Mosque, very close to our house, was a complete playground for us.

The mosque's imam, Melle Sabri, in his sixties, was at the time a perfect white-bearded grandfather, but what I would understand when remembering later was how well he understood a child's soul. In the hodja's behavior there were the patience, delicacy and wisdom of a man who raises roses. He was not a hodja performing a duty; he was clearly a righteous man doing a job he believed in and loved. He loved his prayer, his ablution, his Qur'an recitation, and he made others love them, without tiring or boring anyone and without falling into haste.

How much that compassionate, lovable and wise grandfather-looking melle did to draw children to the mosque and make them love the mosque. At prayer times he taught the children prayer as though teaching them a game, correcting the mistakes of those who erred with a smile. The children who crowded into the mosque would join the prayer at prayer times with as much reverence as possible under his sweet-and-stern discipline, but apart from prayer they would also go in and out of every corner of the mosque to be discovered and play their games. Having discovered my voice as a talent, he even gave me the task of reciting the adhan. It was a small mosque, of course, with no loudspeaker. With that thin child's voice I would recite the adhan, shouting at the top of my lungs. You cannot know what a source of pride that was at that age. When I walked around the neighborhood and some acquaintances said they had listened to the adhan in my voice, the pleasure I felt was without equal. I think it was the occasion on which I felt, for the first time in front of others, that my father was proud of me.

In those years, since Ramadan fell in the summer months, the evening and tarawih prayers in the scorching Siirt heat were performed on the terrace of the mosque. Melle Sabri distributed, as iftar fare to the congregation, which was not large in number and most of whom were children, lokum between two biscuits that he had philanthropists provide. I think this was the best reward for attending the evening prayer. In those years when I was 7-8, I do not actually remember whether I was fasting, but we never missed that iftar. Probably we were also getting used to fasting thanks to those iftars. The tarawih prayer performed under the stars on that concrete terrace, which from the evening prayer toward the night prayer had cooled considerably, had a completely different flavor. Of course, amid the plentiful laughter and mischief of children to the point of sabotaging the prayer.

In Ramadan days falling in summer, fasting in Siirt is probably a real act of worship with much greater reward than elsewhere. Because both the long days and the extreme heat make fasting an act of worship requiring very strong willpower. Later I spent the month of Ramadan in many places, including Mecca and Medina, and fasted, and nowhere did I experience such hardship. Undoubtedly fasting is very hard there too in times falling in summer days, but now, thanks to air-conditioned environments, you can live the fast there without feeling that hardship.

The sun, which begins from the early hours of the morning and quickly shows its effect with its scorching heat, establishing its absolute dominion, makes itself felt with its pressure every minute of the day. The old buildings, where the pressure of the sun is relatively less and a little coolness can be found like an oasis in the desert, are filled by people like a refugee shelter. Since these buildings were made of gypsum houses, they were cool in summer and warm in winter compared to concrete houses. In particular, the mosques with fans turning overhead became places where people took refuge, perhaps while fleeing the stifling heat to take a cool breath. Old-structure mosques, for instance, were like a shelter. People who could take a break from their work from noon on filled the Ulu Mosque, Çarşı Mosque, Bab-u Darp or Fahr Mosque, and after listening to the Ramadan mukabele they lay on the floor trying to cool off and catch their breath under the ceiling fans. At that moment the sight of the mosques was very interesting. The people lying on the floor all over the mosque like corpses, at the stop of which great journey were they, I wonder?

As time advances a little more, the hardship of fasting increases even more. The tongue and lips are thoroughly dry, the palates stuck together, the eyes have lost their sparkle, the body is utterly weak. Some people form crowds around the kulleteyn pools of the mosques. Many of the old mosques had such pools. Their water was cold in summer and warm in winter, thus also allowing people to enter in their clothes and take a full ritual bath. When people entered in their clothes the pools through which that small but ice-cold water flowed, it felt like red-hot iron being plunged into water. To come out in those wet clothes, sit on the edge of the pool and wait for time to pass like that was among the routines of fasting in Siirt in the heat of July-August. Fasting in those days was a job in itself that left no energy for any other work. Elders, children, women, men, everyone fasted; the whole city fasted as a city. But we, with our child minds, without regard to the fact that we were fasting, and without regard to the noon heat, would play ball and run after games even at the hours when the sun was overhead, evaporating to the last drop our already dried sweat.

From the afternoon on, worn out and exhausted, with the thirst of someone who had stayed for days in the desert, we began to long for the evening. Not everyone had a watch, of course; we followed the time by asking passers-by. As iftar approached, the flow of time slowed down altogether. Seconds felt like hours. At the head of the table, we were as if ready to attack the water, prepared beforehand and cooled with factory-made ice sold in the market, but we did not attack. Our hand on the water bowl, our ear on the adhan to be recited from the minaret. Who was holding us at that moment, what power? This was exactly what fasting was. A magnificent event in which, in every sense and despite all its hardship, a genuine willpower was displayed. There was no hunger, but there was a terrible thirst, the water was before us, and to touch it our ear was on the adhan.