We are almost through the whole holy month of Ramadan. Today is probably the day, but for sure sometime this weekend the end will be announced. Still to be determined. In any case, the whole city is inching closer by the minute to the big Eid celebration that marks the end to the month-long fast. My neighbourhood is about to get very loud.
It was my first time spending Ramadan in a predominantly muslim country and, in retrospect, it is amazing to me how little I knew about this major religious festival that 20% of the world's population observes. It was humbling being a total outsider. Back in the home country, I am surprised by people who know nothing about Christmas traditions. How can a person live their life without ever knowing about Christmas trees, say? I was that person here. I knew nothing about Ramadan, shockingly ignorant. The sum total of my knowledge prior to coming here was that people don't eat during the daylight hours.
Well it is true that people who are observing the fast don't eat from about 4:00am - when a "pre-call" to prayer from the neighbourhood mosque alerts people that they better eat now or wait til later - until after the evening call, around 7:15pm. They also don't drink any liquids during the day - which was tough this year, when Ramadan coincided with the worst heat wave in recent history. And no cigarettes or sex during the day. And so on. So, kind of a full body - full conscience cleanse each and every day for a month.
Because it is an officially observed, state sanctioned festival there are quite a few legal rules that go along with the observance. Needless to say all the liquor stores are closed for a full month - absolutely no selling of alcohol. You cannot eat or drink outdoors. That means no restaurant patios, no snacking or sipping drinks on your balcony at home during daylight hours, no quick sip from a water bottle in your back pack if you are walking down a hot dusty street and feeling dehydrated. In the workplace in city hall, the big drinking water dispensers were all emptied and removed on the first day of Ramadan and the kitchen was shut tight as a drum. In addition to legal issues around ingesting food or drink in a public office, it is also considered deeply offensive to those who are fasting, so there are strong social pressures to maintain solidarity with your coworkers.
There are a few workarounds, of course. There are special 'tourist licenses' that some businesses can get so they can continue to serve food and drink during the course of the fasting hours. (With their shutters very, very closed to outside view). And at work, the non-fasters could lock themselves in empty offices to have a snack or a drink that they brought in from home. I have to say, though, that not being able to drink my 6 glasses of water a day at my desk meant I was really dehydrated and limp at the end of a work day. And not being able to drink my quota of coffee in the mornings had very, very negative side effects for my colleagues in the first weeks. And I wasn't even fasting.
Now with all of those rules - which I had started to learn about in the weeks and months before the fast began - I had a picture in my mind of a very solemn month. This is probably because I connect religious fasting with the Christian observance of Lent with its emphasis on penance and reflection on Christ's pain and suffering. So I had been imagining a month of self- denial and quiet reflection. Boy was I wrong.
The first indication that I didn't quite get what I was in for, happened on the first night of the festival back in mid-August. The actual start date - like the end date now - was shrouded in a bit of mystery - would it be Tuesday? Would it be Wednesday? It all depended on when the powers that be saw the moon. The night they did see it - boom - Ramadan was announced with incredibly loud cannon fire from the citadel hill, followed by mass fireworks from rooftops and balconies, and children spontaneously running out into the street chanting 'Ramadan, Ramadan!' It was joyful. The coloured, blinking decorative ramadan lights came on in windows all over the city. The extremely nostalgic, affective Coca-Cola Ramadan ads came on TV - kinda like the old "i'd like to teach the world to sing" Christmas one that they used to do. People were filled with a charitable, celebratory spirit. The whole city got loud and stayed loud til 4am.
And so it was every night after that. At about 10pm, after the evening 'iftar' meal which breaks the fast, the streets filled up. Music, singing, card games. The cafe across the street from my house had a live band and bingo game every night on the terrace til about 3am. People had social obligations at midnight... 1 am.... 2am. Meanwhile, the more observant were spending a lot of time in the mosque in the evenings for the reading of verses of the koran. Over the course of the month, all of the verses must be read, and many mosques broadcast the work in progress, which adds to the general noise level.
All of this night time activity means that people are exhausted at work in the day time. Myself included - it was hard to sleep in all the noise. And many businesses totally flip their hours - closed during the day, open at night. Some people stay up all night after iftar to eat their second meal in the wee hours of the morning at 3am/ 3:30am and then catch a few winks before getting to work at 9am or 10am. Now, at the end of the month, the noise level has died down considerably. Largely, I think, because people are too exhausted and dehydrated to keep up the merriment.
So at this point - today? tomorrow? - I will find out what the Eid festival is all about. I am imagining more music, dancing, eating, drinking in public and even more chanting and fireworks. But who knows. I will probably be surprised. Actually, to get a bit of a break, I am heading out to the stark eastern desert tomorrow morning for a couple of days to see Umm Al Jimal, an ancient, abandoned Roman town carved from black basalt rock. Perhaps there I will encounter the quiet and solemnity I have been imagining?
