Okay, just an update: I figured out my clock problem. Some how in changing the alarm I inadvertently changed the clock itself; so that a.m./p.m. were switched. I had my lovely 4 minute adhan greet me this morning. The other good news was that I found my mp3 player! I’m a little embarrassed to say, it was actually in one of the many pockets of my car. I have only owned this car for a few days before Ramadan, so things like discovering I could plug in the mp3 player and even get the chapters to read out on the screen of my radio were genuinely a surprise.
Last night, I prayed my last tarawih at my local mosque, with one extra prostration of shukr, or gratitude, I will be on my way. Tarawih is a lot like an exercise regimen: if you have to go too far to keep it up, you lose. Not being a night person at all, it really has been a blessing to be so close to a mosque and also to listen to the recitation of this particular imam. Maybe when the month is over, I will venture back for some less strenuous worship. It was my last night because today is my last day of fasting in California. I leave for the East coast tomorrow morning for time with my other children who are fasting, and time with my shaykh. I am really excited!
At my shaykh’s place I will also spend time in retreat (more like khalwa than i’tikaf, so I need to explain a bit about these two). The retreat into sacred solitude is a common spiritual practice across theist and non-theist traditions alike. The basic idea is this: everyday, ordinary, mundane lives can spiral out of touch with the sacred, which although always present, might require from us some concerted attentiveness sometimes. The beginning of the retreat idea was always religious/spiritual. Now it has also taken on more secularized forms for sports, drug rehabilitation, weight loss, or even marketing. We retreat from—or move away from—the everyday, ordinary to get a mega-dose of something. In the spiritual retreat we get a mega-dose of sacred remembrance or dhikr.
Sometime during the last ten days of Ramadan, the men will go into the mosque—away from family and work—and become more conscientious about prayer and worship, dhikr, Qur’an reading, and muraqabah or meditation. The day is characterized by fasting and the nights are given over to extreme worship. This like a spiritual vaccination: to infuse the entire self with the sacred. The hope is that after this infusion, we will live in accordance to that Ultimate Reality in our everyday, ordinary lives, long after the sacred month is over. This practice has been going on for over a thousand years. It has gone on all over the planet.
It has also, always been for men only. It’s that gender bias in public ritual thing again.
Well, to be sure, there are some practical difficulties to making it inclusive of women. Logistically, “living” in the mosque—that is, eating drinking, bathing, and sleeping—is life without privacy. The mosque is a public place after all. So a woman, who is strictly observant of hijab, would have to sleep in her scarf. Or it would have to be women-only. I am really curious if the all-women mosques in places like China have this female-only i’tikaf. In lieu of the mosque as the location of the retreat, I used to invite women to spend at least one weekend night, during the last ten days, in my house when I lived in Virginia.
I thought if we could give women a reprieve from their regular schedule—a time for greater worship, more dhikr, muraqabah, Qur’an reading, shared suhur, and additional prayers during the night—that way maybe we too could taste this especially devout formula. I did this for several years.
I think it was successful. I mean, it went on for those years and the numbers who attended fluctuated a little, but I think the women appreciated the opportunity and I appreciated the company in worship and remembrance. This was our sacred isolation. For them they got a retreat from families, work, and other responsibilities for at least one day. We organized a collective fast-breaking meal and shared in the kitchen duties, as sacred work. But that sacred work is only one step removed from the everyday ordinary mundane kitchen duties, if you think about it.
And I’ve been thinking about it. I think about women’s double duty in lots of ways even for this fasting month. Everywhere (except where there are servants; and I want to emphasis this distinction still exists for many countries), the women have a continued set of obligations to children, elderly parents, as well as to themselves and the husband and/or able-bodied men in the family. It’s true, the men get no vacation days for menstruation, but in most families, women are still the ones most heavily engaged in food preparation. That is, fasting or not, they arise before the suhur is consumed to prepare what will be partaken.
They also prepare food for the younger children on the regular non-Ramadan fasting schedule. The children are not fasting. They are hungry at the same schedule as before. They may stay up later with the family for post-iftar meals and worship, whether at the mosque or in the home—but they need to eat when they are hungry. The preparation of this food is almost always exclusively done by women. Fasting women. That is why I used to laugh at non-Muslim friends who thought it impolite or an imposition to eat while I was fasting. I would say, don’t I have children? Don’t they eat? And what is more, am I not the one who is preparing what they eat? We deal with food all the time and continue the fast.
In Egypt, I noticed this most pointedly. As a visitor to the country I was invited often to break fast with a family. I was also told to arrive in the afternoon. The women of the household would give me a sleeping caftan and put me in the bed. Literally. Meanwhile, they went on with the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, the children and their after-school work, whatever. I (the female guest) and the men would be sleeping. I did a lot of sleeping around in Cairo. It soon became comfortable, but at first, I really felt off-center. I am female: I should be with the females of the house. But as a guest, I got the royal treatment. And so did the men of the family!
Khalwa, as spiritual retreat, is not limited to location (i.e. in the mosque). Nor is it limited to the month of Ramadan. The basic idea of removing oneself from the every ay ordinary preoccupation is the same: increased worship, dhikr, Qur’an and muraqabah, meditation, or sacred reflection. Muraqabah is common in many Sufi circles. There are various rationales for it as an Islamic practice. The one I will limit myself to today will be the Prophet Muhammad (saw). We always talk about how he used to take him self off to a cave at Mt. Hira and go into khalwa. We know he was there for days, with enough food for those days: whether to break fast and eat suhur, or some other schedule. What could he possibly be doing all that time away from the everyday ordinary, except muraqabah?
These practices are lovely. They are special. They have a special affect on one’s soul. I take all that for granted, at the moment. I look forward to spending some time in khalwa next weekend at my shaykh’s place. But I want to propose a rather radical reconsideration as well. I have in mind all those years, when my children were too small for me to go out of the house for tarawih. I have in mind that any woman with small children or babies could not even participate in the women-only i’tikaf in my private home. But I do not, in the farthest reaches of my mind and the deepest reaches of my soul, believe that sacred communion is limited to men and to women without small children. So, I’ve been thinking about it.
I remember crawling out of my bed in the wee hours of the night, to embrace a crying baby to put him or her to my breast. Nestled there in my arms I have experienced some of the most sacred moments in my life.
Not every woman has a child, or children. Not every mother will nurse the child or children they do have. But for those who do, I offer another vision of sacred solitude: the one experienced alone with a nursing child. Both the mother and the child are one, and together they are at one with the Lord (al-Rabb). Surely Allah dwells in all places. Surely Allah dwells especially in that special place. Therefore, remember and reflect.
