Opposite, from top: Tuba
prepares the iftar feast
with her mother, Ayse;
Guests (from left) Julia
Manley, Kathy Egea,
John Oldmeadow and
Ahmet Burak Alpay.
Below: Tuba’s father,
Hayrettin with his
grandson, Esad Ozturk.
“At Ramadan you reflect on the time
you share with others. Most of all, you
realise the blessings we already have”York City or an impossible 20 hours
under the midnight sun for Muslims in
Nordic cities such as Oslo or Helsinki.
Someone asks our hosts what it’s like
to sync their appetites to the waxing and
waning of the moon. Tuba says she
always misses the feeling of fasting when
it’s over. “At the beginning, you feel like
there’s a whole month to fast, and it’s
going to be hard,” she says. “But what
you don’t really understand is how
quickly it passes. It’s a social time,
and you have others on your mind.”
Inevitably, our conversation turns to
food. Since meals are prepared during the
hours of fasting, there’s no way of tasting
or adjusting the seasoning as you cook,
meaning sometimes things could go
comically wrong. “Instead of putting salt
in something, you might’ve put sugar,”
says Tuba. “But you tolerate each other
because you get to make fun of it. And
more importantly — you’re starving.” No
such mistakes are made tonight under Ayse’s watchful eye.
While I’m glad to have turned up with an empty stomach,
I also notice how slowly I’ve been eating — mostly because I’m
wholly absorbed in conversation. Kathy, the university lecturer,
tells of the first iftar she attended, years ago, when her late
husband Alan took her to a dinner hosted by Affinity.Years later, when he became ill, the families they had met
drove halfway across Sydney to the couple’s Balmain home to
bring them homemade Turkish food. “This sense of kindness
isn’t just about religion, but the people,” says Kathy. “The
philosophy of giving that’s built on giving.”
At the iftar, I experienced first-hand the communal spirit
of fasting and feasting, of remembering the needs of others
while we wrestle with our own. “At Ramadan you reflect on
the time you share with others. Most of all, you realise the
blessings we already have — the blessing to be able to drink
water any time you want, or eat any time you want,” says Tuba.
“And you realise to live a good life, you really don’t need
that much.”●What Tuba refers to is a kind of embodied empathy.
Those who fast are led to compassion by experiencing the
visceral discomforts of the less fortunate — people for whom
hunger isn’t a choice, but a fact of life. I’m struck by how
different this feels from the contemporary obsession with
“wellness-driven” fasts.
“Sometimes you don’t expect people to challenge
themselves that much, but they overcome a lot during
Ramadan,” says Tuba. “I see my students becoming softer,
more aware of the environment and their friends. They
wouldn’t usually think about it. But during Ramadan,
because they’re hungry, they have more empathy. Somehow,
when you focus on others, you become stronger and learn
to overcome your ego.”
At five o’clock, guests start arriving and we’re ushered
to the dinner table, where our feast awaits us. Looking
around, we’re a motley crew made up of a journalist,
a ceramicist, a church minister and a university lecturer.
To kick off the festivities, our host Ahmet recites a
short prayer to give thanks, before officially breaking the
fast by passing around a small plate of dates — the food
that, according to traditional Islamic teachings, the prophet
Muhammad broke his fast with.
With Ramadan currently falling at the start of winter in
the southern hemisphere, right now Australia has one of the
shortest fasting periods in the world. It’s a breezy 11-hour
stretch of no food or water, compared to 16 hours in NewGOURMET TRAVELLER 77