Fasting Month (III)

Every year for a month all Muslim in the world do the fasting. We don’t eat nor drink from “imsak” dawn till “magrib” dusk. It’s one of the five obligations as Muslim. Somehow kids are not obligated to fast not until they are “balik” teenager. My father, my mother and my other relatives never stopped giving us courage to learn to fast, even only half day or to the maximum time I could bear. They even motivated me by giving sort of bonuses if I could fast the whole day from dawn to dusk, the more number of days I fast during the fasting month the higher bonus I would surely get, and the highest bonus if I could fast for the whole month. That had been going on for a few years. I don’t know if it’s the right way how parents motivated their children, but that what my parents taught me and it worked for me and to my other brothers and sister.

The noon was always the toughest and hardest times for me, there are many ways people normally do to kill the time before breaking the fast. Watching TV, playing with friends, playing chess, playing cards, playing billiard, doing some sport and soon, but doing sport is a little bit too hard I think as we are probably too tired and don’t have enough energy. Again I was still a little kid back then. I was always excited and motivated to do the fasting, especially days before the “Aidil Fitri” or “Lebaran”. I think most kids are so excited to that moment as they will be wearing new clothes their parents bought for them. so was I, my parents would buy some new clothes for us to wear. Even though it’s not a must but I believe it has already become a tradition for most people in Indonesia and some parts of the world. The “Ramadhan” echo is always there, the sound of “adzan” and reading of “Quran” we can find everywhere. The biggest joy ness is the time when we break the fast, most families will gather to break the fast either at their houses or restaurants. Yet there are countless poor people living on the street, they can’t get decent foods or clothes like we do, and have to struggle for their lives to survive.

After ”isya” evening prayer we all will go to mosque to do “taraweh” prayer, my house was next to the mosque, but I rarely went to mosque at that time as I was still too small, but I could see people hurried to mosque since they always passed over my house. One thing also that needs to be considered is never wear expensive sandals because very often we lose our sandals or changed by other sandals. I would say that’s probably one negative thing, which should never happen. But the fact is, it happens almost everywhere. Surely this cannot be reason for us to stop going to mosque after all. After the “taraweh” was finished they would buy snack and food, “asinan” was always the favorite cooking or food, it’s mix of fruits and vegetables and is one of betawi’s traditional cuisine that’s really worth tasting. I used to like it so much though

to be continued...