At Ramadan Feast, It’s 3 Down, 28 To Go

As night fell at Brick Oven Pizza restaurant on Howe Street, Kadir Catalbasoglu lifted a steaming spoonful of şehriye çorbasi — a tomato-based soup with thin noodles — to his mouth. It was the first thing he’d eaten since 3:17 that morning.

With employees Syed Moin and Rahman Yamrali, intern Yaco Pastor, and his son Hacibey, Catalbasoglu — who owns and runs Brick Oven Pizza — was taking part in iftar, the ritual post-sundown meal with which Muslims break fast during Ramadan.

Sunday night was the third of Ramadan’s 31 nights. Brick Oven is one nightly spot with local Muslims gather to break the fast.

The holiday commemorates the Prophet Muhammad’s first receipt of a verse from the Quran. It falls on the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, shifting 10 days each year. After a pre-dawn meal called suhūr, Muslims refrain from eating or drinking until sundown, traditionally breaking fast at the end of the day with water and three dates, in homage to Muhammad.

This year Ramadan lasts from May 26 to June 24.

On many nights of Ramadan, Catalbasoglu and his staff break fast with pizza, the dish for which he has become a minor celebrity at the corner of Elm and Howe Streets. He keeps the affair small at the restaurant, making sure fellow Muslims Moin and Yamrali have time to eat as someone else watches the oven and counter inside. After the two met him close to four years ago — Yamrali on asylum from Afghanistan and Moin from Pakistan (Catalbasoglu was born in Turkey) — he employed them in the restaurant and began teaching them English. Making sure they eat, Catalbasoglu said, is second nature. Feeding people runs deep in his bloodstream, and the two are ​“like my brothers.”

But on Sunday, pizza wasn’t on the menu. Catalbasoglu’s wife had appeared mid-afternoon, crowding the Brick Oven kitchen with deep dishes of cooked lamb, onions, and potatoes, sticky, salted rice, green lentils with shredded chicken and grilled onions, Turkish olives, and thick şehriye. Just before sundown, Catalbasoglu piled a platter high with dates, and another with apples and bananas, and carried them outside. 

Yamrali readied a thermos of saffron tea, a delicacy that he brought with him when he left the Afghan city of Herat for the U.S. Moin baked a round of plain pizza dough in place of lavash, inspecting its crackly edges and char-touched pockets. A little past 8:20 p.m., the three headed for one of the picnic tables by the parking lot, illuminated by Brick Oven’s bright fluorescent lights.

As they ate, lifting cups of saffron tea and pieces of lamb to their mouths, they recalled favorite Ramadan memories in their respective home countries — and some new ones they have made here.

Catalbasoglu traveled back 35 years, to the last time Ramadan started on May 26. Back then, he said between bites, he was in northern Turkey, carrying ​“the coldest water in town” from a well back to his home. He was 8 or 9 then, as the youngest of seven children, just learning to fast. And the neighbors would share iftar responsibilities, cooking different dishes during the day and bringing them to each other for dinner. Despite group celebrations at the local mosques and his one home, he has yet to find that same collective spirit in the U.S., he said.

“You’re missing that part,” he said. ​“The meaning is there but you don’t have everyone around you. Throughout the day, you’re thinking about people who don’t have food, who have less food than you do, and that helps you get through it.”

Ramadan, he added, is about opening one’s table to those who may be chronically hungry or new to the table. As he piled blue porcelain plates with chunks of lamb and lentil-soaked rice, he gestured to Pastor, an intern from Hamden Hall who had spent the day ​“indulging in the culture” by fasting for the first time in his life. A self-described Catholic ​“who goes to church on the holidays,” Pastor said that he was using the internship to learn about culture as much as the dough turning, ingredient-picking, and small mountains of dishwashing that go into running a restaurant. 

For Yamrali, Ramadan in the U.S. is bittersweet. He sees the holiday as a happy time, a ​“gift from Allah,” he said. But in New Haven, he is separated from his parents, three brothers, three sisters, and wife and daughters, who are still in Afghanistan. When he was living in Herat, he said, the family would celebrate together, welcoming in the holiday under the one roof where they all lived. Most celebrations brought in close to 28 or 30 people, he said, The corners of his eyes crinkled as he spoke. 

But ​“I can’t go back,” he said. He hasn’t seen his wife and young daughters for over three years, and cannot visit them before his green card status is finalized in the U.S., at which time they’ll join him. The saffron tea, with the flavor of new flowers, is the closest reminder he has to home. As he spoke, stopping for polite sips of soup and forkfuls of lentils, he clutched the glass container and then handed it off to Catalbasoglu.

He spends Ramadan thankful for his life in New Haven, he added. When he walked into Brick Oven looking for employment four years ago, he had never attended school and did not know English. Now, ​“this man is my family,” he said, gesturing to Catalbasoglu before digging into another bite of lamb and rice.

Moin, who came to New Haven from the large Pakistani city of Karachi, recalled his first fast over 25 years ago. At 7 years old, he had committed to the ritual from the first night onward. When they heard the news, residents of his village had come out to support him. Over 300 of them. 

“The first fast, that’s a big deal,” he said, recalling a large, loud drum that people would bang to wake residents up before 3:17, when the day’s fast usually began.

Occasionally, current events stilled the conversation. A mention of Masjid Al-Islam on George Street brought the talk to Oregon, where three men were stabbed (two fatally) for trying to intervene over the weekend as a white nationalist verbally assaulted two Muslim women. With President Donald Trump’s executive orders and campaign promises to ban and register Muslims, Catalbasoglu finds himself telling his immigration story less and less. Moin and Yamrali are careful about who they talk to, and what they divulge. 

“They are putting more wood on a burning fire,” Catalbasoglu said. 

Around the table, though, the group, speaking in a mix of Turkish and English, tried to concentrate on the Ramadan in which they find themselves, and the ones of years past that connect them to a different configuration of family around the table. As Moin and Yamrali cleared the table and headed back inside, Hacibey Catalbasoglu recalled a Ramadan three or four years ago, around late April or early May. The day had been manically busy, customers flooding the restaurant as soon as it opened at 3 p.m. The two didn’t think they would have a chance to sit and eat. Just as the sun went down, traffic slowed. The place emptied out. Kadir Catalbasoglu began tossing ingredients — bread, fresh red tomatoes, spinach, lettuces — into a salad outside. The two savored their food. Just as they had finished, customers began to arrive again.

His father, chilly in the early summer night, pulled a sweater on. He is expecting this summer to be an easier fast because the weather has been milder. Even if it is not, he said he looks forward to the remainder of the fast, and the reflection that it brings to him.

“Every year is beautiful,” he said. ​“Every day is beautiful.”