30 Nights in Egypt

"Lakheray Ramadan!" While working in Cairo at the end of September 2006, I began to notice cell phones ringing with downloaded Ramadan carols. The customary kiss on each cheek in greeting was now followed by, "May every year find you in good health." Shopkeepers adorned their doorways with blown glass lanterns, and the streets were festooned with bright red cloth, swathing the streets in preparation for the biggest holiday of the year.

Ramadan is a month-long celebration of fasting -- a phrase that I would have considered an oxymoron before I moved to the Middle East. Muslim culture is centered on family life, and much of family life centers on preparing, serving and sharing food. During the daylight hours, devout Muslims do not allow anything ‘foreign’ to enter the body, which includes abstaining from food, water and sex. My Egyptian friends tried to explain to me the importance of “cleansing the inner soul to free it from harm.” Mentions of self-discipline, sacrifice, generosity and empathy for the poor peppered these conversations, but still, I was left confused.

As a Christian, these were values compatible with my religion, yet here, they were sought out in a completely new way. I worried that I couldn’t quite grasp the impetus behind this holiday of collective deprivation. Still, the impromptu tents filled with tables and chairs to feed the poor inspired me. I wondered if there was something to it all, and I decided to try it for myself. So, on Oct. 4, I kissed my Nalgene and my Orbit goodbye.

The first day was awful. I had a headache, and I snapped at my cab driver, who informed me that it was his first day to refrain from smoking in a year. I felt a twinge of compassion. Evening could not come soon enough, and I indulged myself by going to the Chilis on the Nile, a thoroughly un-Egyptian way to celebrate my breaking of the fast. I was doubtful that I could make it a week.

Noticing my frustration, my Arabic teacher invited me to her home for iftaar, the evening meal that breaks the fast. During the holy month, businesses keep 'Ramadan hours,' allowing people to leave work at 3:30 to travel to see relatives or begin the extensive meal preparations. I had the welcome task of overseeing my teacher's students prepare sticky sweets made of honey and nuts. Almost all of the Ramadan dishes are elaborate, serving the dual purpose of making the holiday gastronomically unique and ensuring that everyone crowds in the kitchen to laugh, talk and help.

By the second week, my body began to adjust. I noticed a certain roundness to the hunger rather than the sharpness that had preceded it. I was more thoughtful; colors seemed brighter. Early morning became a profound time rather than a frantic flurry of toothpaste, deodorant and snooze buttons. During my shower, I noticed the feeling of my heels pressed against the tiles and the pale, rising goose bumps in the mirrored flesh before me.

On my walk to work, I was conscious that I was a part of the moving organism of Cairo. There is a quiet power in knowing that you are a part of a 1.4-billion-person global effort to reach the divine. I developed a close camaraderie with dusk; I welcomed it to the sounds of 'Allah Akhbar' and sips of apricot juice.

By the third week, I decided to implement the next stage of Ramadan: devotion and charity. Muslims aim to read the entire Qur'an during Ramadan. Thus, the Qur'an is broken into segments, which make their way onto everything from the back of take-out menus to the nightly news. Security guards at my office, the juice seller on my block, even President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak himself, all read the same sacred words on the same day. I decided to do the same by substituting one holy work for another, using this as an opportunity to rediscover my own religious past. Perhaps because I had never read the Bible in its entirety before, or perhaps because I was reading it under novel circumstances, I discovered a different version of my own religion -- a series of reluctant prophets and recalcitrant heroes, even a Christ who got tired and frustrated at times.

The second step, charity, presented a different challenge. Every day, I set aside the money I normally spent on my breakfast, a mid-morning coffee and lunch into a worn envelope. As it fattened, I thought about how it could be best utilized. I decided to sponsor an iftaar (dinner) at a nearby mosque. Through steaming plates of falafel and heaps of feta, I felt a fullness and a richness that far out-weighed a few skipped meals. My gift didn't change the world, but it did change my perspective.

As Ramadan drew to a close, I eagerly anticipated Eid el-Fitr, the final feast to follow the last day of fasting. As was customary, my friends and I bought new outfits to wear during the Eid party, and we baked mass quantities of sweets to hand out to the children in our apartment building who would knock on our doors that night. A bit of my early fascination with the holiday had worn off, as I, along with my fellow seventh floor inhabitants, shrugged at the now incessant blaring of the same Ramadan carol. (Unfortunately, the three-year old at the end of the hall had chosen a Ramadan lantern that played only one song.)

As the last of my friends left my apartment, I realized that a month of good deeds, abstinence and consideration for my fellow man, was over. The next morning, I ate breakfast, and with that, life returned to its normal pace. However, 'normal' had undergone a transfiguration. 'Normal' was now a little bit better.


Juliet Frerking spent the past year in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, on a U.S. Student Fulbright grant to the Middle East/North Africa. She loves eating yet inexplicably decided to write about not eating.