As I am writing this, it is the 20th night of Ramadan, and I have just completed my Tarawih prayers for the evening.
“Would you say this is the best Ramadan you’ve ever had, yang?” Kat looked up at me, asking casually.
I thought about that question, and I am compelled to answer: Yes. I am not sure if this is the best ever, but certainly the best Ramadan that I can remember in years. I am keeping to the Tarawih prayers, every night, mostly at home. I have been keeping pace with my Quran recitation, and I feel calmer than I have felt in a long, long time.
The Quran recitation, I think, has a lot to do with the latter. This year, like most of the Ramadans I can remember over the past decade or so, I made the promise to myself that I would try to recite the Quran in full – to khatam the entire Book by the end of Ramadan. And most years, I would keep pace for maybe the first week, before the full blast of work deadlines and buka puasa invites and moreh gatherings would derail me by around the second week of the fasting month.
This year so far, Alhamdulillah, it has been good. It is the night of the 20th, and I am halfway through the 24th juz of the Quran. And more than just the momentum – I feel a serenity and a palpable sense of flow these nights of Ramadan as I recite the Quran. My Arabic is barely serviceable, but I know enough to make a guess of what it is I am reading – but even when I don’t, the very act of reciting the Quran fills me with a sense of wonder and grace.
As I recite each verse, I feel myself almost floating on a breeze, my tone rising and dipping and rising again to a crescendo as I reach the end of this verse, or at the start of that other verse. At times, my recitation feels like a horse at a brisk gallop, my enunciation almost breathlessly trying to keep up with flow of His Words. At other times, I whisper the words in a low hush, just luxuriating in the melody of the words, many of which sometimes I can barely understand, with my rudimentary command of the language. Sometimes, I hear myself reading the words and I try to imagine how it must have been for the earliest Muslims, to hear this strange music and to know, in their heart of hearts, that what they were hearing was something truly Eternal.
Every year, I am told that we are supposed to make the best of the final ten nights of Ramadan – a final coup de grace to this most revered of months. I am seeing now, though dimly as if through a haze, that feeling of bittersweet embrace, knowing that I am here in the final ten nights and that the sands of Ramadan will soon run out, not to return for another year. InshaAllah, the hope is to make the most of it, before Ramadan comes to an end.