My family moved to Sweden in 1990 and I will always remember the first time we observed Ramadan the following April. We had to break our fast to the call to prayer from Tunisia because we did not know the prayer timings in our adopted country. Luckily, my mother's friend had arrived in Sweden a few years before us and explained what to do. "You can break your fast according to the closest Muslim country to Sweden. This is what all Muslims do here," she told us. Arab satellite channels had not yet been introduced and my mother spent more than an hour searching for the frequency to a Tunisian radio station before we settled down to our first call to prayer in Europe.
Apart from the sounds coming over the radio and my mother's food, there was nothing in the small town in the south of Sweden to remind us of Ramadan. Even the food my mother prepared was a reminder that we were as far from home and Ramadan as we had known. Many of the dishes we once had at iftar were excluded because the ingredients were not available in Sweden. The first day of fasting at school was not difficult. I did not need to explain why I was not eating or drinking. It wasn't because Swedish children knew about Ramadan, or anything about Islam, for that matter. Aged 11, I was still learning the Swedish language and had been placed in a special class with other Muslim pupils.
Later, it took time to explain to my Swedish classmates the meaning of Ramadan and why I couldn't accompany them to the school canteen for lunch. And all that talking only added to my thirst. Many of them wanted to know more about Ramadan and showed great respect by not eating in front of me during the month. That first Ramadan was the hardest - it was a reminder of the unfamiliarity of this new place we had to call home and how detached we were from their culture.
However, during future Ramadans, the month came to be a period where we worked out how to connect with our old habits and we became closer to Islamic traditions. In the years that followed, tens of Arabic satellite channels were launched, Arab shops and bakeries opened and even mosques appeared in the bigger cities. Observing Ramadan in Sweden was never again like that first time. Today, people no longer need to tune into a Tunisian radio station to work out the time for the call to prayer. Different Islamic societies in Sweden now have their own Ramadan calendar.
Looking back to the time we spent in Sweden, Ramadan became a month where all the Arab Muslims came together through prayer, TV programmes and the family members who would visit our Swedish home. It became the month that brought our family closer as we had iftar together every day. We also started to develop our own unique practices during this holy month. Swedish meatballs are now a prerequisite on our first iftar table. @Email:wissa@thenational.ae