This Friday, some 400 friends, neighbors, and strangers will gather on Twentieth Street between Folsom and Harrison Streets at sundown for a free iftar, the nightly meal served to break fast by Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan. A communal dining table stretching nearly 500 feet long will be set for the occasion.
The iftar, which begins with a prayer at sundown, is open to community members of all denominations and walks of life, according to Aaminah Bhat, one of its 20-something organizers. “The ethos of Ramadan is very much community-oriented,” Bhat told Gazetteer. “Part of serving God is also doing this community work,”
“A large part of my spirituality comes from serving people,” said Bhat, an attorney who lives near the event site. “I think the ethos of this event is not only to feed people, but to honestly feel like I'm serving them if that makes sense. Like I'm welcoming them onto my street and I want to feed them a meal.”
Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic lunar calendar, runs from February 17 to March 19 this year. Observation requires daily fasting of food and water from sunrise, called suhoor, to sunset, iftar. The end of the roughly 30-day fast is punctuated worldwide with the three-day festival Eid al-Fitr.
Bhat’s husband, Nour Eldifrawy, has held community iftars out of his Mission District apartment for years, sometimes hosting upwards of 120 people at a time. This time around, a team of seven raised funds through donors, secured a city permit, and is relying on some 45 volunteers to help run the event.
The halal dinner is being provided for free by Sumac, a Turkish takeout and catering kitchen specializing in Mediterranean cuisine. Their bowls, wraps, and salads are Kim K- and Y-Combinator-approved, with a list of high-volume corporate catering clients. Baklavastory will be handling dessert, and Sahara Mocktails will be providing chai.
Streetwide iftars may be rare in San Francisco, but they are popular throughout the Middle East. “It's very common in a lot of the Middle Eastern countries to close streets down, have a long table and have food all spread out,” said Waleed Tariq, who helped plan the event. “That was the inspiration and that was something paramount to what we wanted to build out.”
Tariq, a software designer by day, served as the event’s site coordinator, securing 70 tables, over a dozen tents, hundreds of chairs, and a sound system. Tariq’s fiancee Zoya Razzak, Bhat’s husband Nour, and friends Abdullah Kucuk, Harris Hussein, and Yagmur Su, made through the Muslim community in San Francisco, are also collaborating on the iftar.
All 400 spots for the dinner were quickly reserved through their contacts in the Muslim community and by neighbors; securing funding, however, was the tricky part. Bhat and Tariq did not want any names attached, corporate or otherwise, and were insistent that the iftar be free.
Instead, funding was crowdsourced. “Honestly, most of it came from having a really tight-knit Muslim community to rely on,” Tariq said. “And because everyone really is connected in some way, it's just about getting that one email, getting that one connection, and then reaching out and explaining the story.”
West Valley Muslim Association, a mosque in Los Gatos, allowed the iftar organizers to use their platform to source additional donations and spread the word. Tariq and Kucuk would commute down from the city before sunrise on Saturdays to catch the mosque’s first morning prayer and network with the Muslim leaders down there. They say the South Bay’s well-established Muslim community was instrumental in helping execute the event, as well as inspirational for what they hope the San Francisco community could soon be.
“If you go to South Bay, it's all there. They have so many mosques, so many people there. But in the city, that's been really lacking,” said Tariq.
After the dinner, those participating in evening prayer will be encouraged to head a few blocks away to the newly-opened 8,000-square foot headquarters of Alif, a startup incubator for Muslim founders. The office has become a community gathering space after hours, regularly hosting around a hundred people each night for prayers.
“I think we have a decent share of people who won't be fasting and are not Muslim who are coming,” said Bhat. “I'm just excited for them to partake in the joy that is Ramadan. I feel like my heart is glowing and that's just the feeling of being in community and eating with people.”
