Adapting Old Ways to a New Land

On Wednesday night, the first evening of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the tidy Long Beach apartment of Asem and Miriam Abusir was festooned with green, white and gold crepe paper and glittery placards of sayings from the Koran. Presents awaited their children--a toy car for 2-year-old Jehad, a bicycle and Arabic software for 4-year-old Mona--to be unwrapped on Eid al-Fitr, the three-day celebration marking the end of the month of fasting, prayer and good deeds.

Holiday presents and decorations for Ramadan are not common in Jordan, where the Palestinian couple were raised. But such are the accommodations the Abusirs and many young Muslim families are making to adapt their traditions to America’s glittering Christmas season--and to allay the persistent questions their children ask about why they, too, can’t have a tree and lights?

“We told them everyone has their own holiday--the Christians have Christmas, the Jews have Hanukkah and we have Ramadan and the Eid,” said Miriam Abusir, 23, a tall woman dressed in flowing brown robes and a hijab head covering. “Since we don’t have trees and lights, we had to come up with our own decorations.”

For many immigrant Muslims like the Abusirs, the non-Islamic society of America poses innumerable challenges to the observance of Ramadan, which requires abstaining from food, drink and sexual activities during daylight hours: how to steel their deprived stomachs from temptation in luncheon meetings or against offers of morning doughnuts (“The coffee smells so good!” Asem said). How to fit in traditional visits to friends and family in the Southland’s sprawling metropolis of long commutes and overscheduled lives. And this year, when Ramadan falls during Christmas time (the holy month rotates throughout the year because it follows the lunar calendar), how to stay true to a season of self-denial and purification amid the extravagant consumption promoted in the American holiday season.

Yet, paradoxically perhaps, the Abusirs say Ramadan in the United States will be more deeply meaningful for them than it ever was in Jordan. The reason: They deepened their commitment to Islam a few years ago.

The change occurred first in Asem, 37, a trim, articulate man who immigrated to the United States in 1980 to study electrical engineering at Cal State L.A.

When his wife was four months pregnant with their daughter, she began bleeding. The couple rushed to the hospital, fearing the worst. An ultrasound revealed that all was well, showing their baby peacefully sucking her thumb, a miraculous portrait of life that demonstrated the awesome power of God, Asem thought. He went home and, his wife says, began praying that very day.

Miriam was a bit slower to come around. Although she was raised in a conservative fashion--no shorts or tank tops in public--neither her mother nor her sisters wore the hijab; her father did not particularly care for it.

When Miriam was pregnant with their second child, her husband suggested that she begin covering herself. She refused, already feeling unattractive because of her pregnancy.

“If I wear the hijab, I will look so ugly,” she remembered telling her husband. “Don’t push me.”

He didn’t. But he gave her the tape of a fire-and-brimstone lecture by an Islamic scholar about the fate on Judgment Day of those who do not follow God’s commandments as revealed in the Koran. She listened and cried.

“If I die today, I’m going to hell,” she thought in a panic. The next day, she asked her husband to take her to buy traditional Islamic clothing, and has covered herself ever since. “If you have a nice flower, you shouldn’t let everyone smell it,” Miriam said.

Besides, she was chased by a man later arrested on suspicion of being a serial rapist the first year she was in Long Beach. Now that she covers herself, no one bothers her--although people assume she doesn’t speak English, ask if she’s a nun and sometimes, she said, give her cold stares.

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Deeply religious, the Abusirs speak passionately about their faith. Their apartment is filled with religious artifacts--a Koran, posters of Mecca and Medina, where the Prophet Muhammad is buried. Asem has preset his watch, computer and living room clock, fashioned in the shape of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, to beep reminders of prayer time. The couple are already teaching their children to memorize Koranic passages.

Although some Muslims in the United States hide their faith for fear of bias, Asem said, he has freely shared it with his colleagues at Northrop Grumman in El Segundo and find them open and curious. Northrop has let him adjust his work schedule during Ramadan to leave by 3 p.m. so he can get home in time to break the fast with his family.

The company also supports an on-site Koranic study group and allows Asem to steal away to a private room for his five-times-a-day prayer. And the firm--where Asem works as a computer systems engineer on a new jet fighter project--approved a three-month leave of absence last year so he could make the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca, study his religion and visit with his family and friends in the Mideast.

For Miriam, the stronger religious commitment has inspired her to go beyond the usual fasting to focus on good deeds, which are believed to bring double blessings during Ramadan. She has already made a list of the needy in her community for whom she intends to collect donations: the widow with three children, the divorced woman, the elderly lady with a disabled son whose husband just died.

She also plans to make copies of Islamic lectures, prayers and songs for people. And she hopes to cook for single men so they can break their fast with nutritious meals rather than fast food--her culinary prowess very much evident in the assortment of homemade Mideastern pastries, cookies and yogurt she offered to visitors this week.

At 6:30 p.m., the family loaded into its van and headed to the Islamic Center of Hawthorne for the extended Taraweeh prayers offered this and every night during Ramadan. The men--mostly Egyptian but some African Americans and others--filed into the front of the partitioned room, the women and children into the back.

Shaykh Hamdy Douma, the center’s dynamic and well-pedigreed new imam from Egypt, led the prayer and recitation of one chapter of the Koran; the entire holy book will be read during this season. He reminded those assembled that Ramadan is a time to be particularly focused on purifying their hearts, speaking kindly to all and doing good works for all people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

It is a lesson the Abusirs have already taken to heart.

“When you become more religious, your heart becomes very soft and emotional,” Miriam said. “You want to reach out to everyone.”