Hari Raya

A positive aspect of religion is that it crosses borders and unites people from different cultures who share in the same rituals and follow a shared calendar of events, (although of course it also has a frightening power to divide). While Ramadan can be tough in the heat and humidity of Malaysia (I know of one person who was hospitalised and put on an intravenous drip because it is forbidden to take oral medication in the day), in Turkey the period of fasting goes from 3 o’clock in the morning until after 8 at night and in latitudes further north the time for eating and drinking is even less. But this can still be turned into a communal event as in Istanbul the whole of the ancient hippodrome, which in daylight belongs to coachloads of tourists, is regained by the locals to break the fast, and every patch of grass is claimed by a group to set out their picnic.


The holy month of Ramadan concludes with Hari Raya, which literally means celebration. In Kuala Kangsar it is celebrated by driving aimlessly around the town as slowly as possible, causing traffic jams and being impervious to the needs of anyone trying to get anything done. Apart from the occasional mad dog I seem to be the only person who walks anywhere in the heat and even in the middle of the night motorbikes can be heard droning around to no obvious purpose, their noise punctuated by the bang of an odd celebratory firework. Depending on the quality of sleep, the sound emanating from the mosque at 5 am, a little reminiscent of a sung mass, can be hauntingly beautiful or an irritating disturbance.

To be fair this is only the experience of an outsider and really it is a time for family; those working in the big towns return to their villages and there is movement throughout the country as families unite around the table to stuff themselves at the end of the fast. As I noted some weeks ago the fast itself appears to be a paradoxical festival of food, but the stalls of home-made delicacies have now been dismantled and there is a holiday atmosphere as the population shuffles itself into home-based kinship groups. The scale is not that of the national holiday in China when around 260 million migrant workers are on the move, but then nothing is ever on the scale of China.

Hari Raya seems to peter out rather than finish with a flourish but I suppose our Christmas is the same. Yesterday most of the shops had reopened and the schools are back today. The Alfa Romeo garage is open and they seem to be gradually dismantling our whole car in an effort to get the air-conditioning to work; Liz has refused to travel in it until the cooling system is functioning but she has now bought her own transport anyway!