Pandemic Stirs Up Eid Traditions

On the one hand, the family was together and the grilled lamb was so tender it was falling off the bone. On the other, lost opportunities and the dangers of Covid-19 had brought them there.

Those mixed emotions were in the air as the family of Mubarakah Ibrahim and Shafiq Abdussabur celebrated Eid as a family-only event for the first time on Sunday in the back yard of their Beaver Hills home.

Usually, the Ibrahim-Abdussaburs mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan at their mosque, at large cookouts or with family friends.

“This is our first time celebrating it at home,” said Salwa Abdussabur, the second youngest of Mubarakah and Shafiq’s children.

The meal became an opportunity to reflect on family member’ blessings, dreams, and challenges in uncertain times.

Mubarakah explained that Islam is very community-oriented. If she travels during Ramadan, she can always find a mosque where she can break her fast. Everyone prays the same way, five times a day.

Now the Covid-19 pandemic has closed her mosque, the Abdul-Majid Karim Hasan Islamic Center on Dixwell Avenue, for group events. Mubarakah (pictured above) has instead found a more personal connection to her faith and a relief from its usual social pressures. She said that she is usually afraid of missing out on mosque events or catching up with friends, even if she feels too tired to go.

“It purifies your faith. It is between you and God. No one else is seeing whether you are praying or not,” said Mubarakah, a physical trainer and host of WNHH FM’s ​“Mornings with Mubarakah.”

She has also been able to see what Islam means to each of her children and feel reassured that they are all on parallel paths, she said.

Three of those four children, plus a daughter-in-law, settled around the table in her backyard on Sunday. The fourth, Sabir, was helping distribute meals at the Islamic Center.

Shafiq and Mubarakah laid out a feast… 

of grilled lamb and salmon… 

.. macaroni and cheese, salad, iced tea and Mubarakah’s famous sweet bean pies. As the conversation bounced between the spices in the lamb, fictional and potential apocalypses and politics, the family reflected on what they had lost and gained this Eid.

Staying Alive

Shafiq (tending to the lamb in the picture above) is acutely aware of the lives the pandemic has taken and those the pandemic could still affect.

“This Ramadan has been extraordinarily challenging,” Shafiq said.

During past Ramadans, the biggest challenge was getting up early to pray. This Ramadan, the list of people to worry about seems unending: an elderly mother, grandmothers in nursing homes, employees at his company, former colleagues in the New Haven Police Department.

On top of that, Shafiq has worried about his family having enough food and cleaning supplies to last between grocery trips. Knowing the unequal impacts of the new coronavirus on African American and Latino communities, Shafiq shops at the crack of dawn and gets enough groceries for a month in one go.

“Black men have died in the pandemic for the same reasons that they were dying before, and now they are dying from the pandemic as well,” Shafiq said. ​“I was hoping that this would be one experience as Americans where race would not matter. And here we are again.”

Shafiq said that he is grateful that he still has all of his children and that they are home safe.

“I try to keep my sons off the endangered species list,” he said.

Salwa added that being Muslim adds another layer to their family’s experience. They said that even while praying at home, a fear lingers that someone will burst into their home to attack them for their religion.

Dream Deferred/Blessing In Disguise

Salwa (pictured above with the family chickens) had just moved to Los Angeles to pursue an arts and social justice career when the pandemic hit. Their father convinced them to move home, just in time to miss airport horror stories experienced by other travelers.

“I was living my best L.A. life. I was living my dreams. It was the year I finally moved out and now the entire industry I want to work in doesn’t even exist,” Salwa said.

Salwa began singing as a toddler. Shafiq, a retired city cop, said that he would wake up to singing at 2 a.m. and would find Salwa clutching the crib. He would put the toddler to bed but the singing would restart 15 minutes later.

Salwa spent much of the first month of the pandemic sleeping off this loss. Then they realized their bank account was looking worse for wear and they still needed to pay the rent on their L.A apartment. In addition to working remotely for an LA nonprofit, they have taken up custodial work at their parents’ company, Eco Urban Pioneers.

While Salwa can’t afford to be a full-time artist yet, their dream is not entirely on hold. Contacts in both New Haven and L.A. have reached out to Salwa to do virtual gigs, including performing on the new virtual stage At Home In New Haven. They are dreaming up a podcast too, a pandemic survival guide for millennials.

And this is not such a bad time to be home. Second-oldest Ismail and his wife Ayanna Bakiriddin are about to have a baby. If baby Aminah is punctual and Ayanna is up for guests, Salwa will get to meet their niece on Friday.

“I feel really blessed honestly,” Salwa said.

Also home is Salwa’s younger brother, Ihsan (to the left in the picture above).

Ihsan has had a turbulent experience of college so far. His first school, Green Mountain College, closed due to financial difficulties at the end of his freshman year. Then, when he was a a sophomore at Unity College, Covid-19 precautions turned his spring break into an online degree experience.

It was hard to stay motivated at home, Ihsan said. He still managed to earn all As and Bs, his father added.

Ihsan is majoring in parks and forest resources. His goal in life is to own land, probably in Maine or Vermont, and become entirely self-sufficient.

This is the only path to countering climate change Ihsan sees for himself, he said. He has become disillusioned with the idea of stopping it himself. The only times fossil fuel emissions have decreased in recent years are during oil crises or recessions — which makes the pandemic a bit of a gift, he said.

Preparing For An Arrival

Father-to-be Ismail is the least stressed of the family members. What is his secret?

“There are so many ways you can die that are not related to race that are just as likely. I could get hit by a car. Being stressed out does not benefit me,” he said.

If he gets pulled over by the police, that is when he would start to stress, he added.

This Ramadan has been a success story of adaptation, Ismail said.

Ismail is shifting careers from project managing at Eco Urban Pioneers to becoming a police officer, following in his father’s career footsteps. At the same time, he is taking on new roles in the house to keep his wife stress-free.

They have Ayanna’s diet down, he said. They are careful that she gets the right balance of nutrients, eats organic and continues to exercise.

As a pregnant women, she is exempt from fasting during Ramadan. It’s the first year she has not participated since her childhood, and she has found it difficult to maintain her usual connection to her faith.

Other difficulties: only talking to her Brooklyn-based mother over FaceTime and having to cancel her baby shower. The baby shower was so important to the family that Mubarakah hired an event planner.

But she is generally a happy person and has adapted. She now plans to give birth at home with the help of a midwife, rather than risking infection with Covid-19 during a hospital delivery.

And the couple has just purchased a home, a few houses down from Ismail’s parents. This brings Ismail’s critical Ramadan responsibilities to three.

“The religion part is never done and the baby is forever. The house will hopefully be done in two years. I can check one item off that list,” Ismail said.