36. RAMADAN, 2019

THAT RAMADAN was a time of transition for Ali, Sadia, and Mersiha.

Ali was adjusting to the extreme heat as he fasted. “He’s just trying to get through it,” Heidi said. Sadia felt exhausted and nauseous, falling asleep the second she got home from work.

And during that month of fasting and prayer, Mersiha and Hajrudin were stepping away from their old world.

They finally closed on their restaurant. And then Hajrudin did what he had dreaded—he quit his job at the senior adult facility, giving six weeks’ notice. Afterward, walking toward his car, he felt as if he were flying out an open window, with no mattress below.

Mersiha, too, was full of doubts. “I keep thinking, ‘How is this going to work out?’ ” she said. But then she would think about their years catering: “We are hardworking people. We are ready.”

In any case, “there is no going back now,” she said, laughing. “We are so done, done, done!”

Mersiha had wanted to wait until after the closing to show her kids the restaurant, and the apartment above it. The three older ones were anxious to see it.

But Elhan refused. “He hates the place,” she said. Elhan was disturbed by all the changes swirling around him. He did not want to move.

Recently, driving down Rutger Street, Mersiha pulled over and pointed to the sprawling old restaurant.

“See, Elhan?”

“No!” he said, refusing to look. “I’m not leaving my house. You can go.”

She tried to reassure him: When they moved, he would have a nice new room. They would bring all his favorite things.

“How can you leave grandma’s house?” he asked.

Mersiha was surprised: He never knew her mother, who had died before he was born. But he had grown up hearing stories. They called their living room couch “grandma’s couch.”

Mersiha was quiet for a second. “We’ll bring grandma’s couch,” she promised.

“We are the family who never moved,” she told me, sighing. “The kids were born in that house, grew up there. This will be a new adventure for us.”

The fabric of their family life was changing.

Faris graduated in the top 10 percent of his class at Proctor High School and got a full-tuition scholarship at SUNY Poly to study computer engineering technology. “Now two kids are out,” Mersiha said, proudly. Ismar was now a junior.

But what made her happiest was how the older boys had turned out.

“They’re very humble kids,” Mersiha said. “Not the ones to brag.”

They understood their parents’ lives were about to get more difficult: They pitched in, driving long distances to deliver cakes and babysitting the younger kids while Mersiha shopped for new restaurant appliances: a cake mixer, a convection oven, a display refrigerator, and a refrigerator/freezer combo.

Ajla—a quiet figure in their harried household—was fasting for the first time. “It was her decision,” Mersiha said. “I told her, ‘Do it when you’re ready.’ ”

Mersiha suggested she start by fasting on the weekends. But Ajla, 12, said, “No, Mom, I want to do it every day.”

“She did it easily,” Mersiha said. “Much better than we did.” Elhan—not wanting to be left out—pretended to be fasting. But he also took a first step: He skipped drinking water from 3 p.m., when he got home from school, until dinner.

It is not easy being a professional cook during Ramadan: Hajrudin usually taste tests everything—soups, stews. Fasting, he simply looks and sniffs.

But Mersiha will put a crumb in her mouth. “I taste—for salty or sweet—then spit it out,” she explained. “If I accidentally swallow, it’s OK. We’re not perfect.”

Ramadan is not just about fasting, she said. “It’s doing your everyday work and thinking of others who have to go through that suffering every day.” It bothered her that her students, exhausted from fasting, fall asleep at their desks.

“I’m like, ‘Hello! I’m fasting. It doesn’t mean you get to do nothing.’ ”

Mersiha longed for her mother: When she was alive, they spent the holiday together. A few mornings she woke up crying, especially at the approach of Eid al-Fitr, the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan.

Mersiha awakened at 4:30 a.m., anxious.

It was Eid: She quickly got her sons ready for prayers in new, freshly ironed clothes. At 5:40 a.m., Hajrudin and the boys left for the mosque. “Only men go to Bajram namaz prayers,” she explained.

Afterward, her husband and sons went directly to her mother’s grave at Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica—a burial ground for all denominations—“to say a prayer for her, and for everyone in the cemetery,” Mersiha said.

When they returned, she brought out desserts: Her mother’s baklava. Her grandmother’s hurmasica, a buttery, oblong pastry. And her aunt’s jabukovaca, a delicate apple strudel. It was her way of honoring the three women most important to her.

Then she gave out presents: a bottle of Dior cologne for the two older boys to share, and prepaid Apple music cards. She gave Ajla, who loved to draw, a sketch pad and colored pencils. Elhan got Lego blocks.

“Then I went by myself to see my mother,” Mersiha said.

It was 11:30 a.m., a beautiful, chilly June day. Mersiha drove to the third section of the cemetery, up on a hill. Then she crouched by her mother’s headstone: Muratovic Ismeta Rod Tekac, 1950–2003, Bosna-USA.

“As soon as I got there, I started crying,” she said. “I couldn’t stop.”

She got things ready: She cleaned out the vase of forlorn flowers, still there from her last visit—and replaced it with a pot of red roses and white carnations. “In Islam you’re not allowed to plant at a gravesite,” she explained. “My mom loves roses.”

She said a prayer.

And then she began talking to her mother—about Elhan, the funny things he says. “Oh, my God, Mom!” she said, starting to laugh.

She talked about Ajla—how reserved she is. And kind. “Mom, you would like having her help you—she’s very patient.”

She told her mother how a classmate of Ajla’s had refused to return an Islamic book she had lent her. When Mersiha asked the imam for help getting it back, Ajla was distraught; she did not want the girl to get into trouble. “She said, ‘Look mom, I found another book I can use!’ ”

Then Mersiha sighed.

“Mom, you would be so proud that your daughter and son-in-law are getting a restaurant. And you would be so much help if you were here today.”

“I will need your help now more than ever.”

She added, quietly, “You were such an awesome cook.”

On Eid, Mersiha often saw deer in the cemetery. And she always saw butterflies.

It might just be superstition, she said, but she felt the deer and butterflies were signs of her mother. Yet that day—beginning to get cloudy—there were none.

She sat there for about half an hour. Then it started to lightly rain. “Is this you, mom?” she asked, smiling.

“Are this happiness or sadness?” she added, her English slipping for a second. “I know it’s a little bit of both.”