Since Ramazan is Almost Over

Couples sit beneath the reddening grape arbor, sipping tea in the garden beneath the minaret of the green Firuzaga mosque. On every corner, greasy doner kebabs slowly rotate in front of glowing orange heat panels, providing a quick lunch to doctors in white coats from the nearby public hospital. Tobacco smoke mixes with car exhaust on Sirasilever Caddesi. The casual observer of my Istanbul neighborhood might not know it’s the middle of Ramazan, Islam’s holiest month.

“Should we not eat outside today?” I asked my lunch companions, wanting to avoid offending those who are keeping the fast.

“Why not? It’s Cihangir! No one’s fasting here.”

Turkey’s polarized secularist-versus-Islamist political environment, some residents disregard their neighbors’ religious traditions without a second thought. As home to many of Istanbul’s artists, writers and free-thinkers, Cihangir probably has one of the lowest proportions of fasters in the whole city. For Istanbul’s secular elite, fasting during Ramazan is a tradition left to the pious.

But walk a few blocks downhill from Cihangir Square, into the warren of alleys threading between decaying wooden houses and decrepit Greek mansions perched on the hill above the Bosporus, the atmosphere changes noticeably. The number of headscarves and chadors increase. Most small cafes are closed because few eat in public during the day.

Iftar – the evening meal that breaks the daily fast -- falls at around 7:00 pm Aromas from the evening’s meal drift from open windows throughout the afternoon, dizzying to even those who haven’t eaten since, well, lunch. A line of men and children completing the final, pre-feast errand forms outside Ekmek Dunyasi (“Bread World”), the bakery that sells the best bread in the neighborhood. Their task is to collect the freshest, warmest Ramazan pide possible.  No fast can be broken without the round, flattish loaf sprinkled with black sesame seeds. Ekmek Dunyasi stays open 24 hours a day during Ramazan to meet the demand.

As the sun sets lower, people scurry to get home and a hum of excitement comes from every apartment as dishes and silverware are hurriedly set on tables and cranky children bicker and squawk. When a short, choppy ezan calls from the city’s thousands of minarets, the alleys fall silent. Iftar has begun.

Even in Cihangir, there’s one time of day, however, that not even the most devoted Kemalist can ignore Ramazan: 3:30 am. That’s when the “Ramazan Davulcusu,” or Ramazan drummers, make their way up and down the hill, providing a free-wake up call for fasters who want to be sure they have enough time for sahur, the pre-dawn meal that will sustain them through a long day with no food.  They do this every morning during the holy month of Ramazan.

The drummers, usually young men with booming voices carrying double headed drums (davul), are an anachronism left from the days when no one had alarm clocks. Because they are, to some, a nuisance, a few municipalities have banned them. Still, many Istanbullus remember them fondly from their childhoods or from their old lives in the village and are happy to give them tips.

Others give them tips to stay away.

Sometimes the davulcusu wait until 4:00 am to begin their rounds. Other mornings, inexplicably, they start at 2:30 am. They are expert at taking short breaks between staccato bursts of drum beats and mani (rhyming couplets), just long enough to allow me go back to sleep. Sometimes, it sounds like they position themselves for hours beneath my street-facing second floor bedroom window.

The davulcusu don’t discern between fasters and non-fasters. They wake the pious and pagan alike, gleefully rousting at 4 am the people who smugly sit at Cihangir’s outdoor cafes at noon, smoking and sipping tea.

The most unforgivably trite description of Istanbul is that it’s a bridge between continents, where east meets west. Not only is it a cliché, it oversimplifies the mix of cultures and attitudes that collide and co-exist, with varying degrees of success, every single day.  In the spirit of Ramazan, when Muslims are supposed to examine their lives and reacquaint themselves with the virtues of compassion and forgiveness, Cihangir’s believers and non-believers have figured out ways to annoy, if not completely accommodate, one another. It’s a step in the right direction.

Let's agree to disagree

Comments

[Robyn]

Excellent post! And the closing picture is great. But - are we to believe that you actually got out of bed at 4am to photograph that davulcusu? Or did you pay one to pose for you at a more aggreeable hour?
;-0

A couple of our wildest nights ever were spent in Istanbul during Ramazan -- a long Saturday night in a meyhane with live music right in the middle of the holy month, and the night right after Ramazan ended (same meyhane). That visit to Istanbul left us saying, 'Man, those Turks really know how to party!' (The same cannot be said for Malay Muslims post-Ramadan, unfortunately.)

[carpetblogger]

The sacrifices I make for art! I did get up to take that dude's photograph. I tried half-heartedly to learn more about them. How much do they get paid? What qualifies them to be drummers? Is there some sort of union that provides training and health benefits? what do they do during the day and the rest of the year? Do they particularly enjoy waking yabancis and non-believers?

Meyhane life in Turkey is awesome.

[eren]

Its nigella seeds on the pide, not black sesame. I think you're missing a "not in the last sentence, am I right?

[Bulent Murtezaoglu]

"How much do they get paid?"

You'll get a sense soon enough. He'll go door to door asking for money tomorrow. At least you know what yours looks like. It used to be not that uncommon for several to show up, each claiming he's the real one and the others are fake. The joke below is actually based on real pamphlets you'd occasionally see:

http://www.haber3.com/haber.php?haber_id=285653

[carpetblogger]

Ok, Bulent, how much will they want? I want a yabanci non-believer indirim too!

Eren, Nigella seeds or black sesame, I don't know. But Binnur is my source on all things related to Turkish food and if she says black sesame, that's what I use!

http://www.turkishcookbook.com/2006/09/turkish-ramadan-pide.php

[Bulent Murtezaoglu]

Heh, you can just choose to be absent. If you were Turkish you'd run the risk of geting some lip if you just pay him 1YTL. I think they hope for five minimum if they manage to get to a door. On the other hand, he knows you are a yabanci and not fasting (and cannot be guilted into paying for the sin) so I wouldn't worry about it.

We didn't get a drummer this year, because I don't think he got paid enough last year. I know for sure he couldn't even get into some buildings. (I watched, because I was curious about the same thing.) These people will disappear eventually, so you are experiencing a dying tradition.

[mind the gap]

Gosh that all sounds so interesting - although I'm not sure I could cope with broken sleep for too many nights in a row. For now, I might just prefer the drunken lot spilling out the Georgian restaurant below us supposedly 'singing'.

[strudel]

You would be shocked to learn that Ramadan is just a copy of the Crhistian Quaresima, a short period of semi-fast, whose rules have been dictated by the Pope of Rome during centuries. (How many things did we, the Italians, invent, duh?). As far as I remember in its last version the faithful could not eat anything but vegs for one week in February. The trespasser would repent and confess his sin.
Maybe in some Catholic munastery the nuns still perform Quaresima.