Getting My Ramadan On

Those of you who aren’t Muslim, or who don’t live in an Islamic community, may have forgotten that it’s Ramadan. There’s no forgetting in Morocco. 

Ramadan is the most holy month of the Islamic calendar. This year it began on October 24th and it’s not over yet. Since the Islamic calendar is about ten days shorter than the Gregorian one, Ramadan comes about ten days earlier every year and moves through the seasons accordingly. I am lucky to be living in Morocco when Ramadan is in the fall, though it is still hot enough that I haven’t brought out the blankets yet and am sleeping with just a sheet. 

The basic idea of Ramadan is to focus on Allah and prayer while fasting. The mosques are packed, more so than during the rest of the year. Many people go to the mosque for all five prayers each day, instead of praying at home. During the day Muslims to not eat, drink or engage in sexual activity. For some this can mean even simple contact with the opposite sex like shaking a person’s hand. Different sects of Islam have different rules about how far this goes. In Morocco there are all different interpretations, though I have yet to be chastised for shaking a man’s hand. 

As soon as the sun goes down though it’s a whole different story. Women put on make-up and perfume. Whole families dress up and go walk around town, chatting with their friends and neighbors in the streets. Every once in a while, a daring couple will hold hands in public. It’s a lot like the rest of the year, except the night prayers are extra long, about an hour every night after the big evening meal: lftor. 

And the food. 
When the call to prayer sounds at sundown (which is mercifully coming a bit sooner each day) plates of dates, dried figs and other high energy sweets are passed around with glasses of cold water and milk. Then the devout go pray (this means everybody but me and the small children) before we sit down to lftor. 

And the water. 
It's amazing how many glasses, no - pitchers of water you can drink without ever feeling the need to go to the bathroom. On hot days we stand around drinking for a while before anybody wants to eat. Parents have to remind their kids not to drink too much or they'll get sick. The effort of self-restraint to not eat during the day is eclipsed by how hard it is to restrain yourself from eating and drinking too much when you finally can. That's the real test. I made myself sick one night and have been very careful since then. 

I have been invited to break the fast with so many different neighbors I can’t keep track of all of them. When I finally do show up I am usually scolded for not coming sooner and have to list all of the other people who have insisted I eat with them. I love it. I haven’t really had to cook since October 24th. Some families just have the traditional soup “harira” which is tomato based and has chickpeas, parsley, cilantro, celery, onion, flour to thicken the broth and little noodles. Each family has their own variation: some add chicken bits and others beef joints, some lentils and others fava beans, some have lots of noodles while others put in just a little but add rice or wheat kernels. 

Harira is invariably accompanied by dates and “shebekiya” a sweet made with ground almonds and sesame in the dough that is twisted into elaborate rose shapes and fried before being drowned in honey and sprinkled with more sesame seeds. I helped Maryam make it once at home and was surprised how complicated the ingredients for the dough were, how fun it was to twist the little strips of dough into their fantastic shapes, and also how long the whole process takes. I was there for only four hours and had to leave before the frying started. 

Some families have a regular big meal of tajine before the harira. I invariable leave those houses staggering, barely able to carry my over-stuffed belly to work. 

Ramadan has its own schedule and I have to admit I absolutely love my Ramadan work schedule. I am at the Dar Chebab from 8pm to 10pm. That’s it: two hours a night. Since nobody wants to study much after gorging themselves on harira and shebekiya, I just lead conversation groups. People drop in at any time and I have found an array of art projects to keep their hands busy while we chat. I bought string to make friendship bracelets and have paper and markers for drawing. 

When I get home after work I have a small dinner. I try to cram in the vegetables since lftor is mostly carbs and sugar. I usually am in bed by 11 or 12. I wake up between 4 and 4:30 to have “shor” the pre-dawn meal that is thankfully getting later. If my lftor was particularly big I usually skip dinner and just go to bed until shor (the s and h are pronounced separately, not like the usual English sh). I try to make shor a high protein meal with eggs and sausage (non-porc) to last through the day. At about 5 or 5:30 I make it back to bed and sleep as long as I can. I have made it as late as noon, though the cat doesn’t often let me sleep in that late. 

The rest of the day I do as most (unemployed) Moroccans. I sit around the house, nap and read. Since everybody else I know of in my town has a TV I am somewhat of an abnormality since I sit around reading instead of watching Spanish soap operas. Moroccan and other Arab channels are full of religious programs, some of which I have grown to like. One Moroccan channel has a competition of children to see who can chant the Koran best. There is a specific singsong sort of way to chant it, with prescribed places to stretch out the vowels and certain places to pause. It all seems very complicated to me, but there are some young kids, like one eleven year old from Tangier, who are very good at it. I also appreciate that this competition has as many girls as boys, if not more. 

I also fill my days with trying to tidy up my house, which over the course of my summer travels has become a terrible mess. I want it to look semi-respectable when my parents come at the end of Ramadan. I also spend an hour or so each day trying to study Arabic without falling asleep and usually go check my email at the cyber a block away. I’ve tried working out, but it’s no fun when it’s so hot and I’m not drinking water. 

I am not expected to fast the whole month. When women are menstruating they do not pray and do not fast. Unfortunately they are expected to make up those days sometime during the rest of the year. (They don’t have to make up the prayers for those days, but they do have to fast.) Also people who are sick, pregnant, breast-feeding or traveling are not required to fast. The catch is, if they don’t fast during Ramadan, they have to make those days up. It’s easier to fast when everybody else is and some people choose to fast anyway, so they don’t have to do it later. 

Ramadan has been interesting, and I have gotten a lot of reading done, but it’s so long. The first week was exciting, it felt like Christmas Eve every day. By the third week I’m just tired. And I’m not fasting like a Muslim anymore. I’m not so particular about finishing shor before the dawn call prayer. The rule is you’re not supposed to eat after the first daily call to prayer, when it gets light enough to see the difference between a white and a black thread. I suppose this works better out in the Sahara, since here in town the street lights always show the difference. 

I’m fasting to see what it’s like, mostly out of curiosity. I am also fasting for one of the stated Islamic reasons: to feel compassion for the poor. I am not trying to test myself and on days I feel too dizzy or when I had a hacking chest cold, I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about drinking water or even eating an apple. I think the best thing about not being Muslim is that I don’t believe there is any eternal consequence for drinking water when I’m thirsty.