Lubna Qureishi: Observing Ramadan

As Ramadan comes to an end, Lubna Qureishi shares her experience as a Muslim woman fasting and taking care of her son.

Several days into the month of Ramadan, my high school freshman son ran into to my room: “Mom, wake up!” He said. I looked at my watch and realized I slept through my alarm, and we had only 15 minutes to make some eggs, drink enough water and hopefully, squeeze in a caffeinated beverage before dawn! I jumped out of bed and while I was able to scramble those eggs, getting them down in five minutes was not easy.

You all may know that Ramadan for Muslims means no food and drink from dawn to sunset. It’s a time to connect with God and give charity to the less fortunate. And along with the spiritual side…there are some funny realities.

Ramadan sneaks up on you — because the Muslim calendar is lunar, it comes 10 days earlier every year, and heck, sometimes we don’t even know the exact day it begins. It surprises many of us and suddenly we have to incorporate a new level of discipline into our days.

Though we abstain from food and drink — we cannot escape food, especially if we have to prepare meals for kids or make dinner for guests. Imagine not being able to taste what you make. And you do strange things this month too — you make a date with a cupcake after sunset, and you go to the grocery store and buy things you’d normally never consume, like an industrial size bag of deep-fried junk food.

Because we wake up before dawn each day, the cumulative sleep deprivation catches up with you. While waiting in the car for my son in the pickup line, I’ve routinely dozed off, as his friends walked past me. One day when my car was in the shop, I texted my son: “Today I’ll be napping in your dad’s car.”

Ramadan truly makes you grateful for the small things, and I mean small. Just one month ago, I took eating an apple for granted. But in Ramadan, the thought of biting into a juicy apple after 13 hours of nothing makes me positively giddy. And when just one month ago eating a meal was routine, when I gather with family or friends at sunset to simply break bread, it’s a celebration, Thanksgiving for 30 days. Ramadan takes the mundane and makes it spectacular. With a Perspective I’m Lubna Qureishi.

Lubna Qureishi is a writer and lives in Palo Alto.