Different languages, different colours, one shared humanity.

At the Pumpkin Market: An Autumn Encounter in the Light of Surah Ar-Rūm (30:22)

In October, pumpkins bring colour to the countryside as the first mist begins to settle over the fields. They are orange, green or white; long or round; smooth or full of bumps. Some seem made for cooking, others simply for admiring. At farm stalls, people pause to look and compare, lifting one pumpkin before putting it back and choosing another that better suits their needs.

An ordinary autumn Sunday. And yet, if we stop to observe what is happening at the pumpkin market, we realise that this is a day that brings us together. Among those choosing their pumpkins are people of different languages, backgrounds and cultures. Standing before the same stall, each is looking for something to take home. A pumpkin for a soup, a pie or a spiced dish. Perhaps for a recipe learned from a mother or grandmother, or for a flavour yet to be discovered.

The pumpkin grew in a Swiss field, but the stories it will bring to the table come from much further afield.

A Vegetable Across Cultures

Sometimes, what we see in the local landscape seems to belong exclusively to local traditions. Pumpkins can appear that way too: produce from our own countryside, woven into our autumn customs.

Yet we need only imagine stepping into kitchens in other countries to find them there as well.

In Syria, pumpkin has a place in traditional cooking, including a preserve called murabba al-qarʿ, in which pieces of pumpkin are cooked in sugar syrup. In savoury dishes, it may be paired with meat, onions and spices, with recipes varying from family to family and from place to place.

In Turkey, it becomes kabak tatlısı, a dessert made by slowly cooking pumpkin with sugar, often served with walnuts and, in some versions, tahini.

In Afghanistan, we find borani kadoo, where the sweetness of pumpkin meets a yoghurt and garlic sauce, with ingredients and seasonings that vary according to the recipe.

In South Asian cuisines, pumpkin appears in dishes fragrant with cumin, turmeric, ginger or chilli. In Indonesia, where it is called labu kuning, it can be made into kolak, a sweet dish with coconut milk and palm sugar, often flavoured with pandan and also enjoyed during Ramadan.

Behind every dish are familiar gestures, family customs and different ways of welcoming someone to the table. The same ingredient takes shape within different stories.

Pumpkin Before Halloween

In autumn, pumpkins are often associated with Halloween, but that association encompasses only part of their meaning.

Many Muslims choose not to celebrate Halloween for religious reasons, while still cooking and eating pumpkin. It is a permissible food in Islam, and serving it does not mean taking part in a celebration.

Remembering this can also help us understand what we see at a farm stall. We cannot know what a pumpkin means to the person choosing it. It may evoke a celebration, an everyday meal, a childhood memory or a religious tradition.

Before assigning a meaning to someone’s actions, we can leave room for their story.

Our Needs Have a History Too

We all need to eat. But the way we meet that need is intertwined with culture.

We choose ingredients, decide how to prepare them, and determine when to eat and with whom to share a meal. A dish can nourish the body while also making us feel at home, preserving a connection with someone far away or opening up a relationship with the person sitting beside us.

Cristina Palmieri’s reflections in Un’esperienza di cui avere cura offer a way of understanding this scene: our needs, too, acquire meaning through the ways we learn to experience and respond to them. Nourishment, the gestures surrounding it and our sense of belonging take shape within relationships and cultural contexts.

Today, this reflection can move beyond the pages of a book and become visible at a pumpkin market.

The people gathered around the stall share a need, but each brings their own history to it. Recognising both what we have in common and what makes us different allows us to draw closer without erasing those differences.

Belonging Without Being the Same

A sense of community begins in small encounters: making room for someone beside a crate, offering advice on the best pumpkin for soup, or showing curiosity about an unfamiliar recipe.

We do not need to share every custom to share a place respectfully.

The Qur’an offers a clear perspective on community. In Surah 49, verse 13, the diversity of peoples and tribes is linked to knowing one another. Differences thus become an invitation to meet. In Surah 5, verse 2, we find the call to cooperate in goodness and righteousness.

In the light of these passages, community can be understood as a responsibility expressed through our actions: in how we welcome others, cooperate and care for our relationships.

A market does not remove the distances, prejudices or difficulties of living together. But it offers a tangible opportunity to see another person engaged in an act we recognise.

They are choosing something to take home, just as we are.

One Sunday, Many Tables

It should come as no surprise that people from different cultures meet at a Swiss farm, each looking for the right pumpkin. Yet noticing this can change the way we see an everyday scene.

Those pumpkins will end up in different pots. They will be chopped, seasoned, baked or simmered in coconut milk. Some people will follow a recipe handed down through generations; others will improvise. Around those dishes, different languages will be spoken.

For a moment, though, all those stories passed through the same stall.

We can learn something about community in this way too: by watching the hands that choose, listening to people and recognising an unexpected familiarity in their gestures.

Amid the first mist and the colours of autumn, a pumpkin becomes a meeting point between a field, a home and the world.

At the pumpkin market, among different languages and recipes that travel from one country to another, we can glimpse something of our shared humanity. The Qur’an recalls humanity as originally belonging to a single community (Al-Baqara, 2:213) and the common origin of all human beings (An-Nisāʾ, 4:1). The diversity of peoples and tribes becomes an invitation to know one another (Al-Ḥujurāt, 49:13), while the diversity of languages and colours is named among the signs of God (Ar-Rūm, 30:22). Alongside this diversity come the call to compete in good deeds (Al-Māʾida, 5:48) and the recognition of the dignity of the children of Adam (Al-Isrāʾ, 17:70).

These passages also illuminate an ordinary autumn Sunday: people with different stories meet at the same stall and choose something to bring to their tables. The recipes differ, as do the memories, but the desire to nourish, welcome and share brings us closer.

And every pumpkin is beautiful because no two are alike.