The Only Beating Drum
As Ramadan comes to a close, I have no doubt that I’ve grown in this past month. Day in and day out I watch everyone around me munch their glorious lunches and sip their tasty drinks. As the sun rises and falls I stop my hand from grabbing, among a litter of snacks and guilt traps, an open bag of cheddar Goldfish. And with each drop of sweat I look straight ahead, telling myself I can make it through this workout without a sip of water.
Yet, in my case, this was all by choice — I am not religious, nor is there social pressure for me to fast — but that just might be part of the problem.
After every Ramadan, you have a kind of primal resilience. Hunger, thirst, and lust comprise some of the most core, carnal urges every human being deals with. Understanding how to contain and control those urges is a tremendous learning experience.
But there’s another side to Ramadan — the communal side. When I was younger and lived with my family, we would eat together before sunrise and break our fasts together at sundown. And when we broke our fasts, it wasn’t just any old meal… it was an event. This meal, called iftar, often brought relatives together, from the aunts and uncles that lived a few minutes away to the cousins that you haven’t seen since last year.
The food was such a hot topic and not just from habit. Cooking while fasting always brought about the most curious of concoctions, ranging from “happy accidents” to “chew the thing on your plate and smile.” You hope it was the former, and if it wasn’t you pull one out from the joke bank to ease the disgruntled (but polite!) relatives.
It’s easy to imagine how thirty days of this would bring a family together. And it’s even easier to see how, when the fast is tearing you apart, you at least know that your loved ones are going through the same thing.
Those times, though, are long gone. The vast majority of my family is in New York and the tri-state area, and after college I decided to move out to Chicago. While I have lots of friends in the area, none of them are fasting for Ramadan.
So, out here, I’m sticking this one out on my own. But my decision to fast is one that I don’t regret.
I have no idea whether I’ll do it again next year, even though I know I’ve gained something that only the people who fast can understand… but the next time you bring over your shitty food, I’ll still eat it and smile.
