Dear Family, Friends, Colleagues, and Loved Ones,
Today is my last day of Ramadan fasting.
I love Ramadan.
In a few hours - at sunset - it will be the 1st day of the Islamic month of Shawwal and Eid al Fitr - the celebration of “Breaking the Fast” - will be celebrated by Muslims around the world.
We will greet each other with cries of EID MUBARAK!!!
I will be one of them.
Tomorrow morning I will join my sisters and brothers in communal prayer and spend the day in celebration, visiting friends, and feasting.
As one of the two major holidays annually celebrated by the Ummah, the global Muslim community, it’s a really big deal.
At the mooment, at this moment, I would like to close these comments by sharing with you four not-so-easy pieces that have moved me recently.
A lovely obituary of Walid Khalidi, the historian of Palestine. I didn’t know Walid well - I only met him a few times both in Beirut and Cambridge - but I treasure his devotion and intellect and his unrelenting commitment to truth and justice:
“His reputation as the historian of the Nakba, established through his studies, books, and historical collections, is well known in Palestine and throughout the Arab world, as well as among researchers worldwide. But these towering scholarly achievements are less known globally, and remain to be fully recognized, especially since, from the outset, they went against the prevailing Israeli narrative around 1948 and ever since.”
https://mondoweiss.net/2026/03/in-fond-memory-of-walid-khalidi-the-historian-of-palestine/
Inspired by the fact that both Lent and Ramadan
began on the same day this year an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Jamie Hamilton - an old and dear friend - invites us into a loving and intimate dialogue bridging Muslim and Christian belief.
“The beauty of the Qur’an’s universal call to care for each other reveals a pathway to embracing a pluralistic monotheism that leads to a spiritual humanism, by crossing boundaries into a new land. Readers are invited to leave the exclusivity of competing religions and philosophies to journey to a place of inclusivity that invites all to live within the depths of our soul where joy, insight, and dignity reside.”
https://niche-lightuponlight.org/
A reflection on Nowruz and Iran by Nancy Harmon Jenkins on Substack.
I’ve known Nancy and her family since we all lived in Beirut decades ago. She is a wonderful writer, especially about food.
“.... It was Nowruz then, too, and I had no idea what I was getting into. The festival lasts 13 days and typically, city dwellers go out to the countryside to enjoy the first spring breezes while all the country folk flock to the great cities, Tehran, Shiraz, and Isfahan among them, for a taste of urban excitement before settling in to the chores of a new farming season. In the event, we (I traveled with a friend from Beirut) got caught up in this exhilarating exchange of populations and consequently missed a lot but thrilled to the sense of elation, of new beginnings, that the holiday brings.”
https://nancyj.substack.com/p/nowruz-wakening-to-a-new-year
Hashem Shakeri’s Portrait of a Climate Hotspot in Iran.
I had never heard of Hashem Shakeri until I saw this portfolio of work. It is unforgettable.
“If Hashem Shakeri’s recent and ongoing series of photographs were a novel, its main characters would be a short-snouted crocodile and a resplendent kahur tree. Both are native to the wetlands of Balochistan, a region pounded by drought, covering the far southeast of Iran as well as southern and western portions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, respectively. Both carry heavy meaning for the people who live there.”
https://aperture.org/editorial/hashem-shakeris-portrait-of-a-climate-hotspot-in-iran/
Salamaat,
Robert
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