A Dinner for Breakfast

As most of you know, a group from our church is preparing for a trip to Turkey later this year. Part of the preparations is to get some lessons from Fatma Kilinc to learn more about the country and their customs. She is also teaching us some of the basic phrases so we can get around.

After the second class, she invited all the students to go to the home of a Turkish family to take part in an iftar dinner. The iftar dinner is the daily special meal that the Muslims have during Ramadan, their month of fasting. They fast from sunup until sundown during this month. The yearly month of fasting is one of the five pillars of the Islam. This year it roughly corresponds with our calendar month of September. We, as a family, wanted to take part in this, even though we are not participating in the trip to Turkey.

Fatma got us in contact with Huseyin and Ayse Senturk. So on Sep 13th, we went to their house for an iftar dinner. We had a very good time together; we learned more about the Ramadan and the “rules” for fasting. One of the things we learned is that they get up very early in order to eat a small meal before the morning prayer at sun up. Children do not fast for a full day but on a weekend they will fast till noon.

The food that Ayse and Huseyin had prepared was delicious and plentiful. We had traditional Turkish appetizers, and a few delicious main courses. In addition, they had different desserts for us to eat with Turkish tea. We were really full after that. The children by that time had lost their shyness and played nicely together while we had a good conversation. It was a very good.