So, we’re a few weeks into Ramadan here. Amy and I have been making a point not eat or drink in public, and especially not to stand on a street corner chugging some cool and refreshing bottled water next to someone who hasn’t been able to allow anything to pass his lips for the last 10 hours. The breaking of the fast, or iftaar, is a substantial daily event, during which families often get together and have a feast for dinner, which they follow with elaborate desserts. One night while my parents were staying with us, our landlord’s wife and daughter brought us some pastries which were as fancy as they were delicious.
I have to admit, prior to coming here (and reading Islam: A Short History), I had assumed that the Ramadan fast had something to do with some sort of spiritual cleansing. My only real exposure to it was during the dormitory days of my first year college, when my next door neighbor would get up at 4 or 5 am to cook a huge meal before sunrise. While in those days I often hadn’t yet gone to bed by that hour, I was uniformly bleary-eyed for one reason or another and I never inquired further. What I didn’t realize is that the period of fasting is intended to make Muslims more aware of the hardships of their less fortunate brethren. Now that I’m a little more informed, this makes perfect sense since, at it’s core, Islam is a rather socially conscious religion.
The most outwardly obvious signs of the holiday (other than dramatic and somewhat terrifying shift in traffic patterns around 6pm when everyone is rushing home to eat) are the bright lights and decorations, often centrally featuring half-moon designs. And at our local Starbucks, Amy discovered that a creme-brulee latte is exactly how you should observe a religious holiday based on privation and abstinence. To be fair, this is really the only example of the kind of exploitation Christian holidays are treated to in the states, but it is nonetheless a funny one.
