Narrating a new story

Samar Kaukab, who leads a research accelerator program at Columbia University's Natural Sciences Division, reflects how much Ramadan has changed for herself and her kids this year - and how a new story can beautifully unfold.I already knew Ramadan under quarantine would be strange for me. What kind of paradox was this? How do you pass a test that asks you to sustain both spiritual elevation and social isolation when the rituals that bring you closer to God necessarily involve communal worship? And if it would be difficult for me, what about for my kids? How would they develop their relationship to their faith when our very traditions – the things that make Ramadan 'Ramadan' – would be unrecognizably altered?Last year, when the world was a very different place, my three children were off from school for the final ten nights of Ramadan. With few constraints on our time, our evenings were nothing short of magical. Every evening, we went to the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati (ICGC) to eat iftar in large gatherings of friends and strangers. The community hall burst with the sounds of congregants offering to get each other bowls of fruit and critically necessary cups of steaming chai mixed with condensed milk and extra sugar, the better to stay up late for night prayers. Children ran in circles around tables, buoyed by the precious freedom offered when fasting parents turn their attention to eating after a long day of dehydration and hunger. Every dinner was a fantastic spectacle of rapid-fire coordination: the iftar course, followed by Maghrib prayers, followed by dinner, followed by dessert and chai, followed by the call to Isha prayer, all within less than two hours and served to hundreds of hungry people prior to the Taraweeh prayers.Ask anyone from the Midwest, and you've likely heard about the ICGC "Ramadan tent." The tent is just what it sounds like: brightly striped tarps lit up by strings of bulbs, shielding endless tables of food and drink. Community kids (and sometimes parents) play basketball in the parking lot and the conversations of community members who are happy to catch up pierce through the stillness of the night in Southwestern Ohio. Wherever you turned, you saw someone you love: my children's grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, babies, and close friends. In Ramadan in our community, even the dead of night is full of light and warmth.This year's Ramadan is a challenge. There is no community or congregation. The masjid is closed. There are no tents lighting up the grounds as you drive past on the highway. We cannot experience the awe that comes from standing under a gigantic golden dome twinkling with crystal lights or the hush of the sound of thousands of people descending into sajdah simultaneously during communal prayers. For much of this Ramadan, my parents had to be in quarantine, meaning it was just the kids and me, unimaginably separated from our extended family. I worried that my children wouldn't appreciate Ramadan, that the month would somehow be lost in the vast void of social isolation.I was wrong.I forgot that human beings are hard-wired to handle complexity. Children are excited by new ideas. Their minds have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided they have a story to guide them, nothing is too difficult for them.All I had to do was give my children a story. This paradox, too, could be accommodated.We have discovered new rituals to replace the old ones. From afar, my parents asked them to make short cellphone videos about different Islamic and human values—honesty, humility, gratitude. We zoom into iftar dinners and late-night women's qiyams.We go around the table after Iftar, every night, and say what the best and most challenging part of our day was, and share one thing that we learned. (Today's winner--and maybe the winner of the whole month--was the discovery, made in the backyard, that snakes can swim.) My parents are back from quarantine in these last nights, which was good. (My dad handled the snake.) We pray together every night as a family. We do dua, together, as a family. My eight-year-old son has become the Imam, the kind that is more than conscious of the women and girls praying alongside him. My daughters stay up late at night in qiyam with me. Through open windows, we hear the wind rustling, metal clanking against a basketball hoop, the long sweeping echoes of a truck rumbling down the main road, the silence of the night broken by chirping birds at dawn. The sun rises and sets. The night becomes day. At the beginning of this month, the moon was born; at the end, it will die, and be reborn again.Ramadan has changed, Ramadan is the same.To read all '30 reflections for our times', please follow the Facebook page '30 days 30 deeds', Instagram @salmahasanali, or subscribe to the newsletter at www.salmahasanali.com.