Ramadan means many
things to me. One of them is an annual look at my relationship with my body.
Every year, it opens with really intense caffeine withdrawal. For the first few
days, my head feels twice as heavy, and I try to beat drowsiness all day. The cold-turkey
absence of caffeine and reduced sleep combines with hunger and thirst to make
you feel like a shell of yourself. Every year I feel the same confrontation:
how much of my daily life is made possible only because I have a young and able
body that I can push to certain limits. I anticipated the caffeine withdrawal
this year and quit coffee more than a week in advance. It did make the
beginning easier; my head felt lighter and I was not as drowsy. Ramadan still
follows a relatively similar pattern for me every year. The first few days
shock the body, it cannot understand why it is being deprived of things it
expects on the day to day. Mentally, it takes almost no toll. I always used to
joke that the energy that comes during Ramadan is delivered straight from Allah.
Normally, one skipped meal or a day following inadequate sleep feels unbearable.
Sometimes even knowing lunch will be delayed by a few hours will have me
thinking about it the whole time. But during Ramadan, these things stop
occupying your brain completely.
Another thing that
takes time to get used to is finding moderation after sunset. For years on end,
I found myself gaining weight during Ramadan. Not only was I eating enough to
make up for the several hours of fasting, I was spending Ramadan eating more
food than I did in other months. There are many ways to explain. Earlier when I
lived with family in Kuwait, it was quite straightforward. It is a month where
everyone is trying to feed each other, there are so many iftar parties all the
time. But it continued beyond this period. I was putting weight on even fasting
in my university where they made no arrangements to facilitate fasting. It
prompts one to question their relationship with food, especially when the idea
of (even temporary) privation is introduced. I would not call it simply a
self-control problem. If it were, it would not be limited to Ramadan. It feels more
like a negotiation with the concept of timed and deliberate deprivation. As if I
were a camel with the capacity to prevent the effects of thirst and hunger by
consuming extra beforehand. It does not work like that, of course. Iftar approaches
each day, and I am hungry no matter what.
Fasting also strikes
me as the most secular amongst the pillars of Islam. Secular not as the
opposite of religious, but secular in the sense that it is less an act of faith
than an omission ‘of’ it. You cannot look at a person and determine that he is
fasting, as you can with a person who is praying or paying Zakat. It is the
most private amongst that acts that establish your relationship with God. At
sunset each day, there is no one else who can be certain of just how honest the
fast was.
I often ask myself why
I hold on to this religion despite the many quarrels I have with it. Islam represents
many things to me. It is a call to action, a lens for me to view the world, to
feel the tinge of anger I do when I see injustice, and in many cases, the
strongest influence on my moral compass. On that canvas, fasting occupies the
biggest place. It is the clearest and most continuous way in which my commitment
to faith survives. I fasted yesterday, I fast today, and inshallah, I will continue
fasting tomorrow.
