BURLINGTON — FaReid Munarsyah missed breaking fast with his friends and family back home in eastern Indonesia. So he created his own gathering in Vermont.
For about two decades, the Burlington resident and co-organizer of The People’s Kitchen has been serving up community feasts on Eid from his South End home.
The Islamic holiday marks the end of Ramadan when Muslims around the world break their month of dawn-to-dusk fasting with a traditional feast.
What that feast entails depends on where you are from. For Munarsyah, it includes shrimp chips, coconut milk soup, lumpia (a spring roll), vermicelli and satays — grilled meats on sticks with a sweet peanut sauce.
A multi-day celebration at the start of the 10th month in the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Fitr began on Wednesday. Munarsyah started his day with prayers at the Islamic Society of Vermont in South Burlington, which held two Eid prayer services to accommodate a larger crowd.
On Wednesday evening, he sported a festive embroidered black and gold kopiah (a pointed cap often worn by Muslim men) as he tossed vermicelli with bean sprouts, scallions and bok choy in a crowded kitchen.
“It’s how we grew up,” he said simply.
The community he grew up in was part Muslim and part Christian. At Eid, the Muslim families opened their doors, holding a feast for everyone, and at Christmas, the Christians did the same. Every house had its own specialty dish, so you had to plan ahead or you would soon be out of belly space, he joked. His mother made chicken and lamb satay and rice.
On Wednesday evening, as visitors came up to greet him and wish him happy Eid, Munarsyah passed the tongs to his friend Elga Gruner, who seamlessly continued the cooking, after frying up a batch of shrimp chips.
“It started with just us and a few families at first,” said Gruner, who is also an immigrant from the same easternmost province of Papua in Indonesia and has celebrated many Eids with Munarsyah.
“I think it just reminds me of home, having groups of people visit and to celebrate with friends,” said Gruner, who is not Muslim but grew up celebrating Eid with friends in Indonesia, which has a Muslim majority.
In fact, most of the people who visited Munarsyah’s house don’t identify as Muslim but were eager to partake in the celebration.
Burlington resident Janet Hicks, who grew up “strictly atheist” in Vermont among white Yankee Protestants and Jewish progressives, now considers herself a “relaxed agnostic.” She was there attending her second Eid with Munarsyah, who she first met through working with a food donation program.
Hicks said she has “a very basic idea” of what Ramadan and Eid mean but she loves food and cooking and understands celebrating with friends and family. As many Muslims break fast with dates, she brought Munarsyah a Mason jar of dates, candied ginger and pistachios.
Her friend Linda Cooper, who is Unitarian, also brought him a bag of mixed fruits.
Cooper took over the food donation project from Hicks, which is how she too met Munarsyah, she said. He would always make a boxed lunch for her to take home, she recalled. And, Cooper said, she just loves his food.
Despite his unassuming demeanor, Munarsyah is a well known face in the city. Many who stopped by seemed to know their host from his activism addressing food insecurity, including his work at The People’s Kitchen — a community mutual aid project to provide free food. In 2022, he made a bid for the Ward 5 City Council seat.
First-time Eid visitor James Balady talked about how Munarsyah set up a community food distribution system during the Covid-19 pandemic. “So I’m here to support him,” he said.
Daniel Munteanu said he met Munarsyah at the Battery Park Movement downtown in September 2020. It was a BIPOC-led month-long protest of the police department in Burlington. Jay Jonathan met him at a climate activism event in the city last summer. Jaz Mojica met him from participating in city mutual aid projects about five years ago.
Mojica, who was attending his first Eid, called it a great way to meet more people from different backgrounds in a very white region.
A drizzle did not dampen festivities. A stream of people walked in and out of the back door, passing through a muddy backyard. All the while, Munarsyah was under a tent on the patio cooking up a seemingly endless supply of chicken and beef satays on stick skewers over a small charcoal grill.
Children, two cats, and a dog mingled seamlessly inside a busy and packed living room and kitchen. There, visitors delved into chores, from making space for multiple dishes on the dining table to washing a precarious pile of dishes.
A newcomer settled into a corner of a well-worn couch and picked up a copy of a Free Radical magazine that lay on a side table.
Just out the back door, Infinite Culcleasure threw a tablecloth on a folding picnic table for the grilled meat Munarsyah was rapidly whipping out. He has been a guest there at Eid for many years, he said.
“Even though I don’t fast, I try to celebrate with my friends and family just as I did for Yom Kippur,” said Culcleasure, who has made runs for mayor and state senate. Plus, it’s also a great culinary and cultural experience for his 6-year-old, he added.
For Syrah Diaz, who met Munarsyah at a Pride parade, the food spelled comfort and the celebration was a chance to connect with neighbors. Diaz does not maintain any regular religious practice, but said it felt important to be spiritually connected: “There is spirit in all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not.”
For Munarsyah, the celebration is special every year and an opportunity to welcome new and different people into his life. His friend Culcleasure summed it up: “It’s a deeper meaning of renewal and any opportunity I get to do that, I’ll take it.”
As devotees around the world ended Ramadan with fasting (sawm), prayer (salah), reflection and community, the motley crew of mostly white residents leaned in to enjoy the spirit of Eid over hot food on a wet Wednesday in a small corner of the city.
Standing around a fire pit in the damp backyard, Culcleasure reflected, “As we all shuffle through life making mistakes, this is a good time to pause, ask for forgiveness and receive grace for being human.”