This year, spring is slowly approaching, defying the calendar and human expectations.
Sharp, pointy green shoots reach for the light, struggle through cracks in the earth, promising crocuses and daffodils. I hope the purple hyacinths that a friend gave my daughter years ago at an Easter service in upstate New York will reappear near the granite steps leading up from the driveway.
Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, introspection and spiritual renewal, ended two weeks ago.
Nowruz, the Persian New Year, was celebrated on March 20th.
Palm Sunday was celebrated a week ago.
Pesach/Passover began before sunset on Wednesday.
Good Friday has passed.
It’s Easter now.
It is the season of love, fragrance, memories, promises, release, and release. Most importantly, it’s a season that reminds us not to forget the lessons of Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, or the “others” of their time: Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
There were probably no daffodils or crocuses in Egypt in the “…spring months” more than 3,000 years ago. At that time, scribes recorded the success of mankind’s first slave revolt, how the Israelites were liberated from slavery with God’s help, and how Moses led the Israelite exodus from Egypt across the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, where he received the Ten Commandments.
The story of overcoming the pharaoh, the story of victory over the helplessness and despair that tyrants and rulers seek to instill in their subjects, and the story of liberation told by the scribes will forever inspire humanity with the promise of freedom from oppression.
Equally moving is the beauty of the Easter story in which Jesus, an olive-skinned Jew from Nazareth, a carpenter, a radical preacher, and a social justice activist, was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, died, buried, and rose according to Christian tradition.
Through the story of his sacrifice, we learn that salvation is by the Spirit as he challenges authority, drives moneylenders out of the temple, embraces dispossessed people, and offers them the promise of salvation.
From the shadow into the light.
A new life seeking light and promise in the cracks in the earth.
“No one today does purely one thing,” my friend Edward Said wrote. “Labels such as Indian, woman, Muslim, American, etc. are only a starting point, and if we follow lived experience for a moment, we are quickly left behind.…But just as human beings create their own history, so too do they create cultural and ethnic identities. No one denies the continued continuity of long traditions, sustained settlements, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems to be no reason other than fear and prejudice to continue to insist on their separation and uniqueness as if that were all that human life depended on.
Today, I want to share a different kind of story, knowing that for months I have been writing about genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, hunger, and land grabbing, all with urgency and legitimacy.
Today I would like to reflect on some personal moments of beauty and light that I renew each spring: memories of family and faith.
Many years ago, it was Palm Sunday, and many families gathered at our house after church.
Weathered and sturdy from years of working in the fields, mills, and factories, the women inside were hunched over. Everyone attended. Shit (grandmother). Aunts. Cousins. Mama and her sisters. Most people are dressed in their Sunday best, wrapped in large crisp starched aprons.
The men have also gathered. They always had to keep tearing themselves away from sitting in the living room, with their calloused hands, weaving the traditional delicate designs for the door next year using the fresh palm leaves they brought home after attending Mass at Our Lady of the Cedars, smoking cigars, playing cards, drinking the coffee Mama made, and making Ma’amour (Arab Easter cookies) to make Ma’am happy.
Palm Sunday. Mr. Sitt had prepared the dough in advance.
Ready.
Walnuts were crushed, mixed with sugar and flavored with rosewater. The dates had been carefully pitted and ground in a meat grinder fixed to a sturdy wooden kitchen table. Then regrind.
I still keep that grinder mounted on my kitchen table for sentimental reasons.
A card table was set up and covered with a white sheet. Additional chairs were being rented.
Everyone had a place.
Everyone was ready.
It was an annual tradition. Some women roll small discs of dough, others stuff them with dates and nuts and fold the tops to create a bulging half-circle, while others carefully crimp the edges and decorate the tops with earring patterns made from small tin tools that Dad made in his basement workshop.
I still have one of those tools.
Later that night, after Ma’amour had given her some time, Shitto baked cookies on her old green garland wood stove (she wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it). I deftly slid the cookies in and out on the very old and worn bark of the tree. I think she probably brought it with her when she emigrated from Syria in the early 20th century.
Everything was baked perfectly.
There is no timer. Just instinct.
Differences in the design of the earrings distinguish date cookies from nuts.
On Monday, the cookies, dusted with powdered sugar and carefully packaged in tins where they had been stored for the past year, were handed out to each family who helped make them, each receiving a share.
I liked the one with walnuts in it. The taste is still there.
In the early 1990s, probably long after I embraced Islam, I remember being in the souks (markets) of Cairo and Damascus in the spring, when Easter and Ramadan coincided. The bazaar was full. Christian shopkeepers welcomed Muslims, Muslim shopkeepers served Christians, and richly decorated church candles and Ramadan lanterns competed for space in shop windows.
Today, I am filled with memories of such stories of salvation and am so grateful to all of you for giving me the opportunity to share them and reaffirm my belief in the unity that sustains us all. Achieving social justice is difficult for all, but the example of the prophets inspires us to action.
Easter cookie logo. Cup of coffee, Torah, vigil, resistance logo.
logo.
Alleluia.
Alhamdulillah.
Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer living in Exeter. You can follow him at robertazzitheother.substack.com.
#Opinion #beauty #Easter #spring #Concord #Monitor