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I get the whole premise of Ramadan. Well, that’s a half truth. I get what I’ve been told but I realise that there is much that can not be told or can be told but not understood without the spiritual drive to back it up. Nevertheless, what I do understand is that the practice of fasting is to exert self-discipline, to sacrifice and to share the experience of going without. The last point is perhaps most significant. Knowing hunger, fatigue, deprivation creates an empathetic bond with those who live in such circumstances. No longer, the suggestion goes, will the hunger of a homeless person seem negligible or removed from my existence. We both exist, both experience hunger, and both need food and compassion to function and survive.
And thus, my ability to eat whenever I want (leaving restrictive beauty standards aside for the moment) is something to be shared, as is our humanity.
This is a beautiful concept. And I can empathise whole-heartedly (and empty-stomachly) that going without food slows down the body and the mind, that hunger magnifies obstacles.
And yet, the practice of fasting during daylight hours struck me as flawed somehow. No matter my discomfort during the day, I knew I could eat at night. I could (and sometimes did, having bowls of cereal at midnight) eat throughout the night if I wanted. I couldn’t help thinking that the lesson of Ramadan was lost on me.
And then it was the night before Eid. Eid is the holiday that marks the end of the Holy Month. It has been likened to Christmas in its importance and its festivities full of food, family and gifts.
Lying in bed on Eid eve I began to feel hungry; I wondered if I should eat something so as not to carry the hunger over to the next day. And then it struck me: I could eat in the morning… and that not everybody could. Suddenly I was quite shaken by this most obvious of observations. After a full month of fasting I’d finally digested the importance of the month and the magnitude of the message.
Eid took place on September 20th this year after the sighting of the moon on the night of the 19th. Following Eid I fasted for an additional 6 days, an optional fasting period called sita (literally, six). Now I’m finished for the year, and perhaps, forever. Still, I found the experience very valuable and if I find myself in similar circumstances in the future, I would definitely do it again. I count myself lucky that I was supported during work hours, offered many dinners by an extraordinarily generous colleague and let be by my non-fasting friends with whom I could not share lunches or brunches or coffees for a month worth of weekends. And of course, that I’m in a place where the sun sets before 7:00pm every night.
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