Ode to Night Prayers (and Childhood)

The Salah Series - Ramadan Taraweeh Nostalgia Edition

Letters from a Muslim Woman is an email newsletter exploring the joys and challenges of life as a Muslim woman. Some installments are free, some are for paid subscribers only. Sign up here:

The Salah Series is a collection of essays around the various layers of Islamic ritual prayer. Each essay will focus on one aspect of prayer, and share some personal thoughts and experiences around it. You can find the first two entries here and here.

You’re not yet ready to let Ramadan go.

Your memory keeps returning to the thick red carpet on the second floor of your local mosque. To the hushed voices of the women, seated in twos and threes, legs crossed, purses and water bottles laid before them like talismans. To the children who scurry through the rows as we stand in prayer, laughter subdued to avoid the later scolding.

To the ache that starts in the shins when you’ve been standing too long, and unfurls, like a flower up your muscles. Ties itself around your waist like a belt, knots your bad shoulder, nestling in the nooks and crannies between the throbbing of your deltoids and your infraspinatus.

Your memory keeps returning to the fans overhead, spinning spinning spinning. The little whoosh sound they make each time they go by. The flutter of air that descends.

Your memory keeps returning to the sudden pleasure of hearing the Imam’s voice recite a favourite verse. To the knot rising up in your throat. To the tears that pool in the crevices around your eyes before spilling over.

What is that sudden rush of emotion? Is it purely nostalgia for the way your father would read those verses in jama’a¹ on the second floor landing of your teenage home, so wide it was a loft where you all prayed together? Is it recognition for the poetry of the words? For the truth in them?

Is it the realization that you’ve fallen short, so short, all year? That if you can muster the time and energy to pray taraweeh² at night during Ramadan, surely you can find the time for a compressed version of those prayers the other 11 months of the year?

Is it the memory of sitting in this same room, in this same mosque, as a 6 year old, an 8 year old, a 14 year old? Is it the memory of your sisters beside you, the elbowing and jostling for position and jokes whispered and laughter muffled and scarves adjusted and feet pressing back and forth against each other, into the ever-so-slightly prickly red carpet, finding their place as the bismillah starts and the alhamdulillah follows and you settle in for the long slow rak’aa³ to come?

A group of women praying in Jam’a

How soon before these prayers in your childhood mosque don’t flood your senses with your past? How soon before you grow into the present?

Your parents and your sisters are everywhere and nowhere, certainly not here. You run into an old friend of the family and she asks, Where is Mama? Where is sister 1, sister 2, sister 3? and you almost get whiplash. Every few months, one of the answers changes. You feel as though you have become the keeper of the memories, of the time and space you shared at home, because it is still your home and they keep making new ones.

What is it to grow roots? What is it to grow branches? Is it possible to do both at once?

Your memory keeps returning to the childhood mosque. The childhood bike trails. The childhood sleepovers. The childhood Arabic homework grudgingly laid out on the dining table, sun spilling in from the side yard window. The childhood cartwheels and front rollovers and back rollovers — remember when we thought we would be gymnasts? The childhood run up the creaky stairs from the basement before it was refinished. When the lights had to be turned off at the bottom and you had to hurry hurry hurry so the monsters wouldn’t nip at your heels and you weren’t safe until you foot touched down on the kitchen tiles. The childhood tobogganing down the backyard hill, watch out for the big evergreen tree smack in the middle of the garden. The childhood cats hiding under the brown chipping deck. The childhood confidence that every day would be the same and everything was just so simple.

You think about the red carpet, about shifting to one side and then the other to try to unlock the stiffness in your joints. You set yourself a new dua⁴ to make during your next sujood⁵. “Oh Allah, bless my parents for the beautiful memories they gave me. Oh Allah make me the kind of parent whose children look back on their childhood the way I look back on mine, with so much love, I grieve it every day.”

Thank you for reading Letters from a Muslim Woman. I share the joys and challenges of being a visibly Muslim woman in a sometimes-unfriendly world. A paid subscription is $7 a month. If you’re enjoying my perspective and want to support me, consider upgrading to help me spend more time on writing and share a voice that isn’t often heard.

If you can’t commit to a monthly subscription, but still want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee below. It helps me more than you realize.

Let’s chat in the comments:

1. Are there places that you go that fill you with nostalgia?

2. Is there such a thing as nostalgia for bad memories, or does it only work if the memories are good?

3. If you have an association with religion or spirituality, is it something that started in your childhood? Where did it start?

I’m continuing to share resources about the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. This week I’m sharing two resources.

This first is a post from Jewish Voice for Peace about Palestinians in what’s called “Administrative Detention”. The name is innocuous sounding, but as you can see below, the ability of the Israeli government to hold thousands of Palestinians of all ages, without charge, in prisons, indefinitely, is as far from innocuous as ever.

jewishvoiceforpeace

A post shared by @jewishvoiceforpeace

The second is this incredibly important piece from ProPublica. “A special State Department panel told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the U.S. should restrict arms sales to Israeli military units that have been credibly accused of human rights abuses. He has not taken any action.”

It seems clear that there are people of conscience at every level of society who are pushing back against the killing in Gaza, but that it’s the people at the very top who are refusing to act. Which means the rest of us have to keep applying pressure, so things can change.

1. Jama’a is the word used to indicate performing salah in congregation, where one person is Imam (leader) and the rest pray behind them. The 5 daily salahs can be prayed alone or in jama’a, though jama’a is encouraged, and we’re told that praying in jama’a earns us 27 times the rewards of praying alone. This is to encourage community and strengthen bonds.

2. Taraweeh are the voluntary nightly salahs, on top of the obligatory 5 daily salahs, that are performed during Ramadan. Taraweeh are not mandatory but highly encouraged. During Ramadan, mosques fill up with people coming to pray taraweeh every evening, but especially during the last 10 nights of the month, which are considered the holiest nights of the Muslim calendar.

3. A rak’aa is a unit of prayer within salah, starting from a standing position, with the arms folded, and going through various motions and ritual recitations, before eventually ending in a seated or prostrating position. Rak’aas may be long or short, depending on how much Quran is recited during the standing portion of the rak’aa. In taraweeh, a lot of Quran is usually recited, as the goal is often to finish reciting the Quran one whole time in sequence, from the start to the end of the month, and so each rak’aa tends to be quite long, anywhere from 5-15 minutes in length.

4. Dua is the prayer we make to God where we ask him for something, rather than the the ritual prayer called salah described above. We make dua during salah at specific times, or after salah, or at any time at all (walking, before bed, etc).

5. Sujood is the prostration position at the end of a rak’aa , or unit of prayer within salah. Sujood is when you put your head to the ground to show your ultimate humility before God, and say his praises. You can also use sujood to make duas and ask God for anything you want: forgiveness, a cure from illness, less anxiety, a new job, an easy trip, anything at all.