Reflections for 2019 me
You will be going a long way from the moment you leave your parents’ nest in Doha in 2019. Without spoiling too much: by the beginning of 2024, you will have graduated with a Bachelor’s degree, gotten a job at a tech startup, and gotten married. Palestine is still occupied but at least the ICJ seems to now be involved with addressing the 75 year old issue - with South Africa leading the case.
I still remember how we had doubts and questions occupying our thoughts prior to starting our Bachelor studies. I was recently reminded about it when I got to visit your high school teachers after nearly 4 years of not seeing them. It was the last Sunday afternoon before the Eid Al Fitr 1444 AH school holiday, just a few hours after I landed in Doha earlier that day. Why didn’t I visit them during those 4 years? Well, it just so happens that high school was on holiday whenever university was on holiday, and I decided to visit Indonesia at the end of my studies and not Qatar. But Alhamdulillah, I was still able to visit our family in Doha during my studies.
That afternoon, one of your teachers asked me about how I was dealing with our “anxiety” - the one you are feeling prior to starting university. It’s the anxiety relating to practicing our religion. Perhaps “anxiety” is over-exaggerating - rather, it was “curiosities of the unknown”.
I remembered how we would ask our friends already living in temperate climates like Canada and the UK about how they are able to still practice Islam in what appeared to be, especially from an outsider’s perspective, a harsh environment - both physically or mentally. I remembered watching videos about how Muslims in Scandinavia were still able to fast even in the week of eternal sun. I also remembered getting disappointed in getting replies something to the tune of “you’ll get used to it”.
The thing is, they aren’t completely wrong. While I have my doubts that I can truly put your mind at ease, I hope this message from the future can bring about a better perspective on how to handle your “anxiety”.
Long fasting times
I remember when we initially moved to Qatar, the thought of fasting longer than 12 hours a day seemed insane. The thought of needing to wake up even earlier and staying up even later than the usual in Indonesia just to have some food and water was (intimidating); then came the fear of dehydration when fasting in the dry heat of the Middle Eastern summer.
But you already know what happened: you played football at 8am before classes start - all the while fasting for Ramadan. You queued up outdoors in the scorching sun waiting for an exam hall to be ready. You were having iftar and taraweeh with friends, before continuing to have karak and heading home that night.
Despite all that, you still have your doubts. In your time, Ramadan took place close to the peak of summer a.k.a. the longest days of the year. That also meant there was news coverage broadcasting the fasting durations in different parts of the world, which in hindsight, I probably saw as borderline fear mongering. The thought of only having one meal a day was intimidating. However, fasting in the temperate regions of the globe is not as bad as you imagine.
There will be a day where you wake up past the Fajr adhan making you miss sahoor. There will be a great dread of getting through the day with only what you consumed prior to heading to bed, but then you get through it thinking “That wasn’t too bad”. Then you missed sahoor another day. Before you know it, you will then skip sahoor on purpose - only waking up to the following part of the adhan:
الصلاة خير من النوم
Prayer is better than sleep.
Within the first week of Ramadan, you will be acclimatized to the feeling of hunger and thirst, and deadlines will be more on your mind than having iftar. Your friends will be mindful and reserve your portion of food for when Maghrib comes. You’ll realize your body is a lot stronger than you initially expect it to be. You will also try to follow the Sunnah by fasting Mondays outside of Ramadan just out of curiosity, then grow to enjoy the increased focus and alertness fasting grants you.
Maintaining the five daily prayers and sleep
From a young age, we were conditioned to maintain our five daily prayers and have a consistent sleeping schedule. While having a single sleeping schedule for the entire year is challenging in a place where daylight hours are highly varied, the basics are essentially the same: ensure to get a total of 6-8 hours of sleep a day.
In winter, this is trivial - you can sleep late and keep your nightly monophasic 8-hour slumber. But in the summer, you will have to find a form of biphasic (or even multiphasic) sleeping schedule. For example, you could have a 4 hour night sleep between Isya and Fajr, and a 2 hour nap after Asr, but this would only work if your evenings are free (which often times isn’t the case).
I will admit that I haven’t found the perfect rhythm just yet for sleeping in the summer while maintaining the five daily prayers. I can’t stop you from crafting some elaborate plan to balance sleep and prayers, but just know that you’ll still be figuring out 5 years later.
Regarding the five daily prayers, each season of the year presents their own set of challenges but also upsides.
The main advantage you have during the winter months is that Fajr is only an hour or two prior to your 9am lecture/morning meeting, meaning you can sleep in late and wake up late yet still be in time for Fajr. On the flipside, the time between Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isya is ludicrously short (~1 hour) that you may not have the time to go to the designated prayer space on campus to perform those four of five mandatory prayers. Despite that,I know you’ll skip to the end you will slowly adapt to identifying safe prayer spots in your environment. Furthermore, you will have to negotiate your meeting times such that they accommodate your prayer times.
During the summer months, you will have to reframe how your life revolves around your five daily prayers. Dhuhr won’t necessarily take place during your lunch time due to daylight savings time, and Maghrib doesn’t (or at least, it shouldn’t) determine your dinner time. You will notice that Asr will mark the end of your work day at around 5pm, after which you will have 3-4 hours of sunlight to enjoy! This is the time people go on walks and cycles, have a picnic, and enjoy the weather in general. In our case, you’ll be using this time gap until Maghrib to do some last minute groceries, cook, and/or have a nap.
General tips
Remember how you tried to learn how adhan apps used maths to calculate prayer times? Remember spending a couple hours figuring out how to pick a taqweem? Well, it’s a mess in Europe. DST is relatively simple thing to fix - just set your phone’s internal clock to sync automatically. However, since there’s no central Islamic governmental body, each mosque has their own adhan and Iqamah times. Thankfully, there’s an app called Mawaqit which essentially collaborates with most mosques around Europe to provide a centralized place for checking the prayer time for each mosque. It also (sometimes, depending on the admin of the mosque) takes into account things like: delaying the congregational Isya prayer in winter, delaying the congregational Fajr prayer in summer.
There will be moments where you will be far from a mosque given the time constraints. Be sure to have a prayer mat in each bag you carry. A plus would be to wear khuffs on travel days because I know how much you dislike wet socks.
Lastly, do not underestimate the European “heatwaves”. Even though the weather may state a value below 32°C, it will feel unbearable especially without AC (+ houses in Northern Europe aren’t built for these temperatures).
Chances are, you skimmed to the end of this text. So, I won’t bother with describing the next four years. Everything you had to learn, experience, and feel - especially that suspense when you finally send that text to her…
However, I will leave you one thing to make it all seem worth it.
You made it. Keep going.