03 June 25
ACON Westie
From the Area – Ramadan Muslim
The following ‘From the Area’ story has been produced as part of a collaboration with ACON Westie, aiming to highlight stories and experiences of LGBTQ+ people from Western Sydney. Read Farah Rustam’s story below, and connect with the ACON Westie community on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
We get our Mantu wrappers from the Tong Li in Blacktown. The one near Aldi on Level 1 of Westpoint. Brandished across the front of the package in bold letters are the words SHANGHAI WONTON SKINS, but the ethnic sensibility of wrapping meat in dough knows no bounds or borders.
There’s a delicate art to wrapping Mantu. One bowl filled with water, another filled with oil we dip our fingers in respectively and use the liquid to press the dough together to form little pockets. There’s something sacred in the ritual. At times I stand in the kitchen with my mother, grandmother and sisters and there’s just wordless communion. Other times, with our hands hostage to folding the Mantu and our minds left to wander, I ask the matriarchs of my family to talk of a time before they were mothers and grandmothers. Inevitably, we soon find out whether we’ve run out of wrappers or filling first. We load the Mantu to steam away in a pot that’s older than I am and was cargo shipped to Australia when we came here almost 25 years ago.
The investment poured into the process of making Mantu means it’s often reserved for special occasions – birthdays, celebrations, and of course, Eid. We celebrate Eid at the end of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Ramadan is spent abstaining from food, drinks, smoking and intimate physical relationships (among other things) from sunrise until sunset. It’s meant to be a time devoted to reflection and self-discipline. In fasting, you gain a sense of mental clarity that can be channelled into building empathy for others and understanding your own spirituality.
Admittedly, I’m not the most pious Muslim. I don’t really drink or do drugs, nor have I ever crossed the sacred line of eating pork. At the same time I don’t think I’ve ever prayed all five prayers in a day – in fact, I can’t remember the last time I prayed outside of Ramadan. There’s a phrase that gets thrown around in the Muslim community to describe people like me: “Ramadan Muslim”. Despite the fact that my faith forms more so part of my cultural context, it has always been important to me to fast during Ramadan.
I often think about all that was lost when our family was displaced. Dislocated from our country, I have never really had the chance to develop a strong sense of connection to our culture. We had our language, but few people to speak it with. Our food, but few places to share this in. Partaking in the rituals of Islam and Ramadan held us, gave us some certainty when our family was left to build a new life in an unfamiliar country.
I could nostalgically count the years in the memories of each Ramadan that passed. My mother frequently tells us of how she fasted in the sweltering December heat when we first came to Australia. With far too many kids under 10 in tow, she crossed the suburbs of Western Sydney with my father on foot to pick up the various household items that had been donated to fill our first home in Parramatta. I remember the Ramadans in spring when I would play badminton with my siblings in our garden for too long before we would be called in for iftar. The Ramadans in winter when our prayers mostly consisted of wishes for my brother to do well in his HSC. I would stand shoulder to shoulder with my sisters for Maghrib prayer, moving through the motions of namaaz in unison and trying not to break when one of them burst out in a fit of giggles
Last Ramadan was different. For the first time, I had to properly reconcile with something that I thought I could spend my entire life avoiding. I first had an inkling that I was not straight around two years ago. It was only in my early twenties that I realised the full extent of my feelings for women were not just in a diehard feminist way, but also in a “oh I really want to kiss her” kind of way. The realisations felt too big and too scary, and so I buried it. I could be bisexual and marry a man and never have to tell anyone, I would think to myself. I pushed it down deep and quietened these thoughts. But when love gets involved, some things are bound to come back to the surface.
See, earlier last year I began to develop feelings for someone. That someone (in their own words) is a non-binary cowboy from country New South Wales. In a beautiful, unexpected twist this cowboy had feelings for me too. It was the most affirming, though at times agonising, process to fall slowly into each other.
Though admittedly it was not free from its challenges. It felt like I could understand that I was in a queer relationship but struggled to make sense of what that meant for me as a queer person. This confusion felt even more magnified during Ramadan. It was my first time fasting while in a relationship and it was difficult to figure out what felt right to me. Was I okay with still kissing them? Maybe not while fasting, but perhaps after breaking fast? Holding hands? How could I practise my faith without alienating my non-Muslim, non-religious partner? How could I participate in this relationship without alienating myself?
I felt more isolated and disconnected from my family than ever. I was going through all of these beautiful and scary transformations and they were none the wiser. I wasn’t connected to any other Muslim or ethnic queer groups I could lean on for support either. It felt like I was in the deep end and haphazardly paddling to keep my head afloat.
While telling my parents and grandparents was out of the question, I was bursting at the seams to confide in my siblings. I so desperately needed their counsel, their guidance and their support. It didn’t feel right to not tell them at the same time, but with siblings sprawled over Australia it took months until I could finally find my chance. It was last Eid, when our house was filled with family returning for celebrations. We spent the morning folding Mantu and enjoying being able to eat in the daylight without the accelerating heartbeat and sudden fear that we had accidentally broken our fast. It felt good to be back in sync with each other.
That night, gathered in my room, I sat with bated breath,
“I’m seeing someone” I could finally exhale.
“What, like a doctor?” my sister asked.
Slowly, I caught them up on all that had happened over the past couple of months. They sat patiently, they listened and moved closer to embrace me when at some point I began crying. The tears felt involuntary. It felt physiological. I don’t know if it was all the fear that my body had tightly held onto finally unwinding itself. Because no matter how sure you feel of someone’s love, the worst parts of your mind clutch to the thoughts: what if this changes how they see me? What if they love me less now?
My siblings have known me for as long as I have known myself. Keeping this part of my life hidden had felt like a great deception. The secrecy had taken its toll on me. Keeping my relationship from them also inadvertently made me feel like it was something to be ashamed of. But amidst voicing my fears and concerns about my future with the people I knew would understand it best, I also got to share my excitement. The giddiness of recounting a crush to a captive audience. I was met with love. Mantu is still reserved for special occasions – for celebrations like Eid and coming out to your siblings.
Since last year I have been actively trying to understand my queerness. On my own terms and not only in the bounds of being in a queer relationship. I’m not publicly “out” and have made peace with the fact that I may never be. I am made no less real as a queer person by choosing to prioritise my safety and privacy over Western (and frankly, tired) notions around what people must do or say to be card carrying members of this community. I will also not pretend like the constant surveillance of myself as a queer person living with my family in Western Sydney is not an ongoing source of exhaustion in my life. It can feel like I’m perpetually playing a game of chess. Wondering which subtle line I might cross that could lead to being disowned, and having nightmares of being outed.
To combat this I’ve slowly been finding people and places where I can feel all parts of myself with abandon. Places where I can step back from the chessboard, even if for a moment. This Ramadan I have cheered in the crowds of Sissy Ball, broken fast with friends and family, danced with strangers at a Mardi Gras afterparty and prayed with strangers at a Multicultural Peers Project iftar. I’ve been awoken at dawn by my cowboy, who so lovingly prepared sehri meals for me with half sleepy eyes. I wish I could comfort the person I was last year, who feared that all the different, complicated parts of who I am would make me hard to love. I wish I could tell the person I was two years ago that the realisations they were burying deep could actually be seeds, which when nurtured could bloom into a beautiful garden.
25 Ramadans since my family first came to Australia and we’re fasting in the summer heat again. This time round, all of my mother’s children are adults. We’re no longer piled into the same house and I grieve those simpler times when relationships were not as fraught. Conversations used to be as easy as slipping into the room next door, but we still find our own ways to stay connected. Years of growing up in another culture have also created some subtle but noticeable distance between my mother and I. We try to meet each other where we’re at, but things are bound to get lost in translation. I don’t know if she will ever know this part of my life that I have been building, this garden I’ve been tending to. Maybe one day we’ll have that conversation. One day when the risks of being honest don’t feel so all consuming and terrifying. In the meantime, I am lucky that these Ramadan rituals act as an anchor. In our shared hunger and shared thirst, we understand each other a bit more. When we break our fast we utter the same prayer
اللَّهُمَّ اِنِّى لَكَ صُمْتُ وَبِكَ امنْتُ وَعَلَى رِزْقِكَ اَفْطَرْتُ
Farah Rustam (she/her) is an aspiring writer who often says she feels more like a Westie than an Australian. She’s a trademarked over thinker and over feeler, especially when it comes to family, love, queerness and culture. Farah’s camera roll is filled with close up pictures of her only child (14 year old cat) and she believes everything tastes better with an unholy amount of cracked black pepper on top.