This April, Manchester University Press is running a series of blog posts to mark the holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting, prayer, reflection, charity and community.
This week, we hear from one of our freelance designers, Fatima Jamadar. Fatima has most recently designed the cover for Expansion rebellion: Using the law to fight a runway and save the planet. Here, she talks all things Ramadan, motorbikes and the Ngong Hills of Nairobi…
Tell us about what you do…
Basically I’m living my dream! I am a graphic designer. When I’m not freelancing, I work in-house.
I research and design beautiful book covers and sometimes the insides too. I work on various commissions from illustrated to typographical book covers, which can take anything from a matter of days to months of honing a final cover. I particularly love projects that I can really get under the skin of and have some hand-drawn, experimental elements mixed with the digital. For example, the recent Extinction rebellion cover I did for MUP: I started off with luggage tags I had collected over the years and ended up using parts of the works in development as scans and textures.
Creatively, this is such a boon and a great way for us to push the boundaries of what we can achieve as a team. I have been very lucky and humbled to be able to work with a wonderful selection of talented editors, publishers, production wizards, authors and illustrators who put their trust in me and allow me to experiment.
In which part of the world are you observing Ramadan this year?
This year I will be in London.
What does your Ramadan routine look like?
Well, it goes something like…
2.30am: I wake up excited! I look outside to see who might be up at this hour, perhaps fasting with me! I’ve being doing this since I was 4 years old. It still never fails to disappoint me peering out in the dark, looking for a fellow “faster”.
I quietly hope my best friend and family – Maria, a Greek Orthodox who has been fasting with me for 16 odd years – wakes up to make me her sweet-salty toasted oats porridge for suhur, the early morning meal. Maria’s porridge will accompany me in these days of Ramadan and Greek Easter fasting which has coincided for the first time in years. So, we are both mixing it up; no animal products for Easter and Ramadan observed together! If I’m on my own, I’ll cook a simple porridge without sugar or honey. Mostly, I try to think what someone who has less could actually afford in such hard times as today so my Ramadan meals tend to be very basic.
I’ll briefly call or text my parents in Nairobi. It’s camaraderie, but also to help them wake up in case they are too tired and sleep in. In all honesty, I do it because I miss them and the feeling of fasting in Nairobi: feeling connected to a shared experience, the adhan from the mosques, and to tease my brother for not getting up on time.
3.30am: I’m on my second coffee. Trust me, you don’t want me working on anything without some Kenyan tea or coffee in me. Once I’ve brushed and prayed, I love returning to a warm bed in the hope that I might sleep and not start working in my head, planning the to-do’s of the day and worrying about work. This is the hardest bit about Ramadan for me. Sleep.
6am: Iwake up, wash and get ready to leave for work. We commute by motorbike to Blackfriars and then I hop on the tube to Pimlico. I pass a Pret on my way to work. I think how nice it would be to tuck into a warm fluffy egg bun after that chilling bike ride. Wrapping my fingers around a toasty bun just to be able to feel them again would be nice… No! Don’t think of food!…it costs about the same as the fitrana (the charity Muslims give to the poor before the end of Ramadan), which makes me feel quietly guilty.
8.15am: I walk into our office. Normally this would be the time for breakfast at my desk! Alas, I get on with the day – emails; catching up with colleagues; attending meetings; and so on. On a meeting-filled day I work sporadically. I tend not to make a start on creative work, but rather, I’ll do the admin side of it. Nothing that needs undivided attention, not because my attention is bad but because the creative side is a treat. Once you are in the flow of making something, you don’t really want to stop.
1pm: I take a break. If there is a common prayer room, I’ll say my prayers. I might join colleagues with their lunches and we’ll chat. If I’m lucky to be with a company that lets me work summer hours during Ramadan, then I work through some of my lunch so that I can leave earlier.
2pm: Post-lunch cups of teas, laptops, notebooks and off we go for our cover meetings on the 8th floor. We discuss illustrators and new books, prospective illustrators and manuscripts. We digress and talk of other wonderful books and illustrators… vegan meals or what the Queen did. Politics is always so heated, as is what books or publishers won certain book award categories and so on.
3.30pm: I’m quietly working through my list and getting ready for the next day’s deadlines and deliverables. This can be book covers, typesetting a picture book, sending files to press, archiving, general banter – or hunting down that ruler that I left on the cutting mat. Trust me when I say I love my stationery… you should know better than to mess with my rulers, magic tape, scalpels and wireless mouse/keyboards.
Sunset (iftar time!): When I’m home, I’m generally quite emotional. If at work, I try to take a few moments to myself away from my desk. I think of it as going to make a cuppa so I can reflect on what I’ve achieved with my fast today. I reflect on how I’ve held my tongue and how calmer I feel.
I start packing up for the day, change into my bike clothes. I’m really looking forward to being back on the bike! It’s liberating. It unwinds my stressful day and I’m out in nature. Well, the A12…
I like watching the evening begin; longer days makes it all better. People spilling out of stations and buses, my fellow commuters, folks dressed to go out for the evening and St. Paul’s in the horizon. Not quite the Ngong Hills of Nairobi, but still a sight!
8.20pm: We are home! It’s cold, wet, and we’re hungry. A quick wash and we start on dinner. This is the only time I’ll get to sit down and offer extra prayers and read the Quran in Kiswahili or English, while Maria preps dinner. I am grateful for that.
Maria knows I like to open my fast under the sky, looking out and up, asking for forgiveness and help to be a better human – and so she leaves my dates and water by the kitchen door. The tall glass of tap water is overwhelming; I think I’m very lucky to have it. My dad will be filling and saving water every Wednesday at around 2am, as water is rationed out to areas in Nairobi.
We open our fast and hug each other for support, and kudos for getting through the day’s fast! After that, I’ll go say my Maghreb prayers and be back for dinner. I know traditionally iftar tends to be full of delicacies, neighbours sending over treats in exchange for yours. Mine tends to be lowkey. But I do love to hoover up a plate of Smyrna meatballs with baldo rice or Greek salsa spaghetti any day!
Post-dinner, I’ll sit down to work on any pending freelancing before praying taraweeh (special night prayer in Ramadan). Post-taraweeh, I’ll top up on water – and perhaps some homemade sweets such as vibibi “little ladies” (think crumpets but with coconut milk) or mahamri/mandazi, semi-sweet triangular fried bread with sweetened milky tea, before going to bed, ready to get up for suhur in a few hours.
What is one of your favourite things about Ramadan?
Suhur time; a time of peace and hope. I love how calm and open I am during Ramadan. Early morning starts like these, all to yourself, are beautiful, quiet and inspiring. I see why we get up for morning prayers. It genuinely feels like a promise of something great to come (even if that’s the quick nap I’ve promised myself after suhur so I can function during the day!)
Finally, how are you planning to celebrate Eid this year?
I’m really hoping for a family gathering with my sister, her fiancĂ© and perhaps my neighbour from next door. An East African BBQ and my sister’s fabulous bakes for dessert. Maybe my little nephew might be down from uni too! If not, I would just like some henna for my hands and a donation to charity. We send boxes of sweets to our neighbours, normally kaimati or loukoumades from Greek bakeries.
Maria always gets me an eidi (eid gift) even when we agree we won’t be buying gifts for each other. So this year I’m hoping for another fruit tree or any from my every growing list (Maria are you reading? J). After all, planting a tree is in itself a kind of charity. So there’s a gift that will be enjoyed by others that will come after us.
Thank you to Fatima for sharing this candid account of her day.
Some of Fatima’s cover designs for MUP include Expansion rebellion, Anti-racist scholar-activism and I Refuse to Condemn.
Look out for other blogs in our Ramadan 2022 series on the MUP website.