I will tell you the truth completely

 

I like lying. I enjoy it in all its forms. I like lying by omission, deliberate obfuscation, and just saying patent untruths. I enjoy it more when it is inconsequential, like narrating a story about my breakfast and saying I had something other than what I did. I sometimes connect this to my love for cinema and literature, two of the most beautiful ways to enjoy dishonesty. I also connect it to my fear of being known; it is easy to avoid being known if not everything you say can be taken at face value. But there is more than that to lying. Any good story requires embellishment. I’ve always maintained that all communication is miscommunication. Meaning is often negotiated by so many (mis)understandings between the speaker and the audience. I’ve also always felt that the fact that interpretation is a discipline of its own is evidence of the fact that things are rarely self-evident, even when we try to communicate clearly. But I’m sure it does not help that I lie on purpose.

A debate I have seen sometimes when talking about state obligations to curb misinformation is the question of how to define it. There seems to be an agreement, in principle, that freedom of speech includes the freedom to lie online. Lying is not automatically deceptive. The obvious question of where we draw the line is one I like to inhabit in regular conversation. I saw a joke once that you could just claim to have a phd because no one really checks. Sometimes I think really confident people are also lying, it just manifests differently.

There is security in lying. No one can draw a conclusion about you that is true to your person, even if they have great judgement. No one can always know what you are up to. No one can know whom your friends are and whom you cannot stand. I have often thought about the fact that if a lot of people show up to my funeral, it will be a huge collection of people who are strangers to each other. My worlds might only collide when I get married or die.  

Sometimes I wonder if the people I don’t lie to know about their privileged position. It is sort of like the personalised notification tones I have for them on WhatsApp; it is a feature of my relationships with them that they have no idea about. Over time, I come to associate these sounds with the people themselves, often forgetting that they would be meaningless to them.

I’ve had friends complain, on occasion, that they do not know anything that is going on in my life. My parents do not make this complaint but they also never know what is going on in my life. Does this also count as lying? I am aware of my reluctance to share details that I consider trivial or temporary. The problem, of course, is that most of life is about details that are trivial or temporary. What book you are reading right now, what I made for lunch yesterday, why this girl keeps coming up to me at the gym…these things make up your whole world. And yet when I go to bed today, they becomes yesterday’s news. When someone was asking me for life updates once and I glossed over an entire incident, I felt a mild reprimand from them for not giving details. I tried the excuse that they were asking for yesterday’s paper. And when she said “but that’s what I want to read,” I could not think of a response.

When something does happen to me, I am already thinking about how I might make comedy out of it. It cannot be tenuous, it cannot be laboured, and it cannot be unfeasible. It cannot also be gaudy. The point of embellishment is not to paint myself in better light; it is not to present me as the version of myself I wish I was. The point of the story is the story. The value of it is in the narration, and it stops being meaningful as the conversation ends. Of course, some movies can be watched many times, but most movies are to be viewed once. Then you move on in life. My mother always says I am terrible at lying. She has a point, but I am also really good at it.

drifting

 

I type a few sentences and then delete everything. A few more sentences and then the same thing. I’ve been doing this for what fifteen minutes. Nothing of worth seems to come out right now. I get up and pour myself a glass of orange juice. Since I’m up anyway, I also get a snack. I don’t want to get my keyboard dirty. So while I snack, the reasonable thing to do is put a show on. I’ll put on Scrubs. I’ve seen it several times, I can watch it without it demanding my complete attention. It gets none of my attention; I am scrolling on twitter already. I should do laundry today. Is the gym open yet? I can never remember to ask if it opens at 4 or 5. It does not matter anyway, I should not go immediately after snacking. Let’s see what movies are on my watchlist. This one I just downloaded is 171 minutes. I am not ready for that kind of commitment. Should I pause the show? I’ve missed so many jokes. Let me go back a bit. This fan spins so quickly. It is loud outside. What should I make for dinner? Who’s going to be home for dinner?

I’m getting up again, toilet this time. I sit down and watch a whole episode. I check my phone now – 7 messages. What a rush I will get from replying to each one. There are also a few emails – not as juicy. Still, I open each one and reply to what needs replying. My legs are shaking. I stop them shaking. I’m drifting; I feel myself drift in real time. I let it happen for a second before pulling back. I need to get back to the paper and start writing again. I am at fewer than one hundred words. My legs are shaking again. I turn on the speaker and start playing music at a really low volume. No I don’t like that song, or the one after. Let me make a playlist right now, I can’t go on listening to music I don’t like. I know this is my own playlist. Should I get up to snack again? It’s 5, the gym is definitely open by now. Must be empty at this hour, I’ll be back soon.  

Privation

 

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.