Mother calls to remind me that Ramadan begins on 27 May (2017). It is the month, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, to be precise, dedicated to fasting. As a good Berber woman from southern Morocco, she is worried because this will be my first Ramadan away from home, because of university. “What will you eat? You will come home to your mother all spoiled”. But she does not know that I have stopped fasting since I was 14. Mother, I’m afraid I will have a lifetime of coming-outs to you.
Ramadan. A very special month, not like the other 11 ones. A month of purification of the body, mind and, for those who believe, soul. It is a month where one abstains not only from food and water, but also from sex. Fasting, and a lot more, is broken at sunset. A true liberation of the senses. I started when I was 13 years old – you usually start during puberty – and I remember how tiring the first few days were, when I would constantly forget that I was in a state of religious fasting and would occasionally eat something, spitting the food out of my mouth right after.
Feelings of guilt? Not really! Mother, all things considered, I am a happy apostate. So many things you don’t know! After Silvio Pellico’s “My Prisons”, I dedicate to you “My Ramadan”, an anecdote for every year I spent feeding with my brothers, far from your view. Let’s start with a fact that will surely make you laugh, I think.
Mother, do you remember that politician who father constantly mocked because of his earring? Yes, that’s right, Vendola… Well, if you remember, in 2013 I forced you to vote for him in the primaries and in the general elections. Mother, do you remember all those trips between Ancona, Fano, Rome and Bologna? Well… you financed my education and my gay activism.
Mother, during the month of Ramadan when I was 16 years old, when father forced me to go with him to the mosque for the prayer (no, I wasn’t abused, don’t worry: I suffered the same religious pressure as you do for Easter or Christmas mass), well, I didn’t do my ablutions for a whole month and sang Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory” in my mind. Hence my being a happy apostate.
Back to us. Let’s leave my mother to later.
This month has a special meaning when spent in a Muslim country. It was 2012 and I spent my first Ramadan in Morocco. There is no precise, fixed, canonical date for the beginning of Ramadan, it is not like Christmas. Everything depends on the moon, because the Islamic calendar is lunar.
A month of spiritual atmosphere, of meetings, of huge meals shared with your huge family. A critical month. A month where, theoretically, everyone is kinder and you put an end to fights and quarrels.
A month of apparent diurnal death, due to the sultry heat, and extreme liveliness at night. I was strolling with my cousins along the Casablanca waterfront, with the majestic Hasan II Mosque fully lit up behind us, while in front of us a mass of worshippers were walking towards the mosque. An explosion of advances and lascivious glances. A latent sexual fermentation that had lasted all day and now claimed its hours. And I could see them, my female cousins, busy juggling the different guys. A most peculiar sight. A month in which appetites dominate, especially sexual ones.
The Moroccan gay writer, Rachid O., will forgive me if I borrow a small piece from his biographical novel “L’enfant ébloui” (Dazzled Child – Stories, New Arts Block Press, 1997), to underline even better what I mean when I speak of a month devoted to sex.
For girls it’s the month when they can go out the most. I don’t really know why, there are a lot of pretexts, they all go out, it’s a party, the bars are open, it’s an excuse to go to their friends, to walk with them, I would say it’s the month when girls are most free. For the rest of the year in the evening they don’t go out, [but during Ramadan] in the evening, once they are done with house duties, girls can go out, be with their friends and do whatever they like, they are much freer, and strangely enough in the evening. There is this one story that always makes me laugh: I had a friend, a womanizer, one who would hit on all the girls, who once met this one girl during Ramadan who told him: “I’ll come with you only if you have a hair dryer”. He couldn’t understand why. So, she explained: “If I go with you and we make love, then I have to wash, I have to do ablutions to purify myself”. Had she not washed, she could not do Ramadan, because she would be impure. And if she had washed from head to toe, as she had to do, her hair would get all wet, and anyone would notice, therefore the guy needed a hair dryer for her to dry them. Otherwise, everyone would have known, had she gone around with wet hair. Needless to say, he had no hairdryer. So, no love making. […] In my opinion, Ramadan’s are the most sensual nights of the year. That’s all there is in the evenings, you see nothing else, everything is super sensual, super sexual, everybody’s checking out everybody. For the rest of the year, not making love for a couple of days is no big deal. During Ramadan, due to the fact that there is a forbidden physical appetite, a compulsory abstinence, in the evenings people go after that” [pp. 103-104].
A month that stresses anticipation towards pleasure, both of the palate and of the sheets.
But back to you, Mother, who is increasingly becoming the star of my articles for The Great Hummingbird. A muse.
Mother, you don’t know this, but I came out to you dozens of times, while you were making dinner and I was helping. I told myself in Italian, French and English. But you don’t know these languages. Mother, you are illiterate, but you know things that others ignore completely. Mother, I am not the only one in the family! Mother, I have never thanked you for introducing me to the Arab-Berber culture and your stubbornness has led me to studying Eastern anthropology, religions and civilisations. Mother, you have been a school of patience. Mother, freedom also comes through the most ordinary ways, like eating a kebab with a glass of wine during the month of fasting. Ah, yes… and with all that, I also am gay. But you probably already know it.
Happy Ramadan to my mother and to those who believe!
Anes
translation by Antonio Pauletta
©2017 Il Grande Colibrì
