The Beginning of Ramadan

Last night we went to the beach house again to celebrate the start of Ramadan.  Ramadan is a month long holiday during which Muslims fast during the daylight hours, which means giving up all temptations, not just food or water, but also tobacco and intimate relations.  It seemed to me at first like a bleak sort of holiday.  I mean, what sort of holiday can it be when there is no food and everyone is grumpy because of empty stomachs? 

In fact, most Muslims look forward to it the way we anticipate the holiday season at home.  I have figured out that this is largely because of the evening hours between the fasting.  Breaking the fast is a festive activity where they eat special carb heavy foods to get them through the day.  It is a time to be around family and friends, eat together, pray together, and celebrate the start of a new year. 

So Ramadan would be starting at approximately 3:30am, as soon as the first call to prayer was announced.  the dates of Ramadan change every year and are determined by the spotting of the moon.  Even the time of day prayers (salat) happen change daily by one or two minutes and are determined by the sun's pattern in the sky.  So if you ask, as I did repeatedly for weeks before hand... "When does Ramadan start and end?" you will never get a straight answer.  "We think, between the 28th and 29th...."  or "Probably Monday, but maybe Tuesday."  This might have driven me crazy a few months ago, but now, frankly I would be shocked to receive concrete information about anything.  

In preparation for Ramadan, the boys invited us to eat with them before they would begin fasting.  I was excited to eat anything I hadn't cooked for myself... since what I cook for myself is usually terrible.  So I didn't eat anything after coming home from work, thinking we would eat around 8pm.  But the boys were detained and didn't show up to pick us up until 10pm.  Then they bought a bunch of pre-made shish kebabs from a shop near where we live, and brought them and us to the beach house.  By the time we arrived, it was nearly 11:30pm.  I hadn't realized that I would be fasting before Ramadan even began.  I was already starving and it hadn't even been 12 hours since I had last eaten.  How would I survive Ramadan?

Every Saudi house has a grill, which is actually a small low to the ground rectangular tray which they fill with charcoals.  I wanted to help, but there didn't seem to be much to do.  Once the charcoal was poured into the tray, they lit it on fire and then we just had to wait for the coals to be hot enough.  Unfortunately, the fire kept going out.  So they lit it again.  They tried blowing on it and fanning it, which worked for a while, but would then promptly go out.  I began to suspect that this is what they make trick birthday candles out of.  Finally, one of the guys brought over an industrial strength fan - you know the kind they use to blow up kids bouncy houses - and started using that to fan the flames.  That did the trick.  Soon we had flames higher than I am coming from a  2 foot tray of charcoal a few inches deep.  Everyone cheered, but I wondered a) where did the fan come from and why did they have it, and b) were we going to be cooking the shish kebobs like hot dogs over a campfire?  I only got the answer to one of those questions.  After about ten minutes of bonfire flames, the coals were finally red hot and deemed "ready" and the fire was blown out, so that only the glowing coals remained.  It was nearly 2am and time was becoming crucial.   We laid the shish kebabs across the tray and carefully rotated them every few minutes or so. After one of the guys burnt his hand turning one of the metal sticks, I took over.   I used my headscarf as an oven mitt and carefully rotated each kebab.  The trouble was it was dark and there was a lot of smoke.  I was having a hard time figuring out if the meet was raw, just right, or completely burnt.  I kept turning them anyway, and occasionally I lifted one up and tried to see how it was doing.  There was a lot of guess work involved.  In the end, we had a few kebabs that were thrown to the kittens because they were over or under cooked.  I think they may have eaten as well as we did when it was all said and done.

At a quarter to three, we all sat down to eat.  There was plenty of bread and meat and vegetables.  We stuffed ourselves and the guys all ate as much as they could.  Their eyes were darting back and forth between the food and the clock in a race to finish before the first prayer.  Luckily everyone was more or less completely stuffed by ten after, and we settled onto the couches to enjoy that post thanksgiving feel.  The guys were passing a huge bottle of water between them drinking as much as they could.  At about ten minutes to the first prayer, the guys started chain smoking cigarettes, trying to get every last puff in before the sound of the call to prayer would make sure nothing passed their lips between now and tomorrow (today) at about 7pm.

While we all sat watching the clock and straining for the sounds of the call to prayer, the guys tried to explain to me what all this meant.  They told me about a good angel and a bad angel on each of their shoulders, and they explained that everything, every single act, good or bad, was always written down in the books the angels kept.  They explained that on judgement day, these acts would be weighed against each other and determine your fate.  They explained that during Ramadan, good deeds counted double.  Bad deeds were still just bad deeds, and each bad deed was worth the same as any other bad deed.  I asked if that meant that murdering someone was worth the same amount of negative points as cheating on a test at school.  Well, yes, technically, they said.  I asked if bad deeds counted double too during Ramadan, and they said, not exactly, but it would be really really bad to do anything unholy during Ramadan.  It seemed like a pretty good system to me.  I could rob a bank, but so long as I helped an old lady cross the street while making my get away, I was even steven.  Unless it was during Ramadan, in which case, I would come out ahead since helping the old lady would count twice.  It seemed hard to imagine how anyone could come out bad deed heavy with such a system.  I didn't mention these thoughts to the guys though, because they had already moved on to talking about the other requirements of Ramadan, which involved praying more than the normal five times a day, and reading the Quran a lot.

The closer we got to prayer time, the more giddy the guys got.  It was almost like they were waiting to open presents on Christmas morning.  They seemed very happy and excited, even as they frantically swigged water and puffed away at cigarettes.  Finally we heard it, faint at first because the nearest mosque was far away, but then the cell phones, which come pre-equiped here with an islamic app that announces prayer times automatically (among other useful features, like GPS to the nearest mosque and a searchable Quran both audio and text) started to go off and Ramadan had officially begun.  Cigarettes were extinguished and water bottles closed.  While the guys did their prayers under the earliest signs of a lightening sky, the girls and I cleaned up the mess from dinner and started preparing to leave.

I was extra sad to leave the beach house this time, knowing I was unlikely to see it again for a month or ever (you never really know with these guys).  Starting tonight, people would be breaking fasts together with their families, and then rotating homes each night to celebrate the end of a days fasting with friends and neighbors in turn.  It's a month of basically non-stop visiting, that never starts until after seven and doesn't finish until 3 in the morning.  But for me, it would be a month like any other. And today would just be another day like any other, except, I realized as the sky faded to a soft blue in front of me, that today would be a day with no sleep.  I would have to get on the bus to go to work pretty much as soon as I got home.  I guess I've done my part in giving up something tempting for the start of Ramadan.  So long cozy sheets....