Iftar *

*{Iftar the time we break our fast}

There is a growing ease to fasting in our home, ironically, given that we are fasting in the summer months when fasting is at its very hardest. It is due, I think, to having children of an age where they can understand, join in, be less demanding than infants.

They understand that we can't take them out as much, do as much, be on the ball as much. They forgive our crabby pre-iftar sloth. They make allowances for us in so many ways. But more than that is their keenness to join in, be part of it, enjoy the fast so that they can celebrate in the meal of iftar. For they love iftar, these two boys of mine. They love it with a love that is infectious. They love the food after an afternoon of fasting, and the juice of course, but as they fill their tummies, and their brains and stomachs finally feel sweet relief, they chatter - none stop - about what they LOVE about this time most of all.

It turns out they love waiting for iftar doing dhikr with mama in the sitting room, breaking the fast and praying maghrib together. They love everyone sitting around the same table eating the same food. They love that best of all. I think they must feel the blessing in the meal. And it's true in hectic days when so many families miss out on an evening meal together, that this has a deep impact on family relations. For a meal eaten together binds like nothing else. Rifts can be mended, hurts can be soothed, bridges rebuilt. There is something so very powerful about eating around one table. It's one of the very few times that something subtle and nuanced, referred to as 'blessing' or 'barakah', can be almost touched on a tangible level. A meal with barakah has the same level of connection that you find in a place of prayer, because it becomes elevated from something quite mundane and animalistic into a channel for true goodness, beauty, healing and grace to enter the world.

Food, we are told, is an equivalent of Qur'an - it has the same status because both are ni'mah from Allah. To have that withheld for so long in the fasting day, and then to feel the blessings of the food magnified by the blessing of eating it in company, well, is it any wonder my children have come to love this time so very much? Unfettered by adult cynicism and rationalism they tell it the way they see it. This time, by their own admission, is a good time, special, the best time of all. And it is a time I treasure too; the iftar is the reward of a hard days' fast. Not just because we get to fill our stomachs, but because we get to sit around one table, together, as a family.

Whoever you are, whatever you believe, may blessings be on your meals too!