Ramadan began today in Morocco.
Correction: Ramadan began at sundown today in Morocco. Scientifically, it's the sighting of the sliver-iest, crescent-iest moon that marks the beginning of the holy Islamic month. We didn't head up to the roof last night to see for ourselves -it was overcast in our parts- but I took my newsfeed's word for it that Ramadan was upon us, and we stayed up late to eat a midnight meal of toast and drink an extra liter of water in preparation for our first day of going without.
So we fasted and tried to stay prone for as long as we could, and it wasn't until four o'clock in the afternoon that we left the house to visit our old pals at the Gendarmerie. Passing a café, our mistake was evident: Moroccan men aplenty casually drinking tea and coffee and soda -behavior which I'm told can get locals arrested during Ramadan- and for once we were gawking at them the way they gawk at us.
In the evening, we met up with some friends. We had thought we'd been invited to break the fast together instead of just ordinary kaskrut (not that an ordinary kaskrut in Morocco is a reasonable amount of food; imagine the sugar high you'd get after downing a personal baker's dozen of donuts). They were delighted by our mistake, and we got a lot of mileage out of laughing at ourselves about it. Charming Moroccans with helpless stupidity is the sweet spot of every Peace Corps volunteer.
But after we sat down to the fully-laid table, with cups of mint tea on our lips our friend Fatima said, "Wait!" Why not wait for the evening call to prayer, she suggested? Otherwise our day of fasting wouldn't count (Islam does allow for this kind of spiritual transferring-in of credits for people who can't fast during Ramadan for reasons of health and cleanliness -by which of course I mean menstruation). We agreed that it made sense to wait until the call sounded, but as we set down our glasses, we realized a terrible thing: everyone around the table was going to push pause on kaskrut to fast these last few minutes with us.
We tried to backtrack. The six-year old son of our hosts and his friend stared daggers at us, then longingly at the pile of sweets out of reach. We insisted they start without us. Our friends waved us off. It would be just two or three minutes now, they told us. Then passed the longest thirteen minutes of staring silently at one's own hands in recorded history, the day's hunger superseded completely by this eternal awkward delay. Finally the muezzin erupted to put us out of our misery and our hostess jumped up and brought us dates, the traditional Ramadan breakfast. Everyone watched with great satisfaction as we tore out the pits and savored those first bites.
And it was sweet, narcotically sweet -not just the dates, but the strange tenderness and solidarity that we were shown, that Moroccans keep extending us, whether or not it's Ramadan, whether or not we're doing it all wrong. We aren't planning to fast -or even stay in Morocco- for the entire month, but it's nice to know that during the time set apart, when the whole country is supposed to be turned on its head, some things won't change. So I smiled and chewed my dates and decided to keep my mouth shut about the gallon of water I'd drunk when we got home from the gendarmes. I don't doubt at all that it still counts.
Correction: Ramadan began at sundown today in Morocco. Scientifically, it's the sighting of the sliver-iest, crescent-iest moon that marks the beginning of the holy Islamic month. We didn't head up to the roof last night to see for ourselves -it was overcast in our parts- but I took my newsfeed's word for it that Ramadan was upon us, and we stayed up late to eat a midnight meal of toast and drink an extra liter of water in preparation for our first day of going without.
So we fasted and tried to stay prone for as long as we could, and it wasn't until four o'clock in the afternoon that we left the house to visit our old pals at the Gendarmerie. Passing a café, our mistake was evident: Moroccan men aplenty casually drinking tea and coffee and soda -behavior which I'm told can get locals arrested during Ramadan- and for once we were gawking at them the way they gawk at us.
In the evening, we met up with some friends. We had thought we'd been invited to break the fast together instead of just ordinary kaskrut (not that an ordinary kaskrut in Morocco is a reasonable amount of food; imagine the sugar high you'd get after downing a personal baker's dozen of donuts). They were delighted by our mistake, and we got a lot of mileage out of laughing at ourselves about it. Charming Moroccans with helpless stupidity is the sweet spot of every Peace Corps volunteer.
But after we sat down to the fully-laid table, with cups of mint tea on our lips our friend Fatima said, "Wait!" Why not wait for the evening call to prayer, she suggested? Otherwise our day of fasting wouldn't count (Islam does allow for this kind of spiritual transferring-in of credits for people who can't fast during Ramadan for reasons of health and cleanliness -by which of course I mean menstruation). We agreed that it made sense to wait until the call sounded, but as we set down our glasses, we realized a terrible thing: everyone around the table was going to push pause on kaskrut to fast these last few minutes with us.
We tried to backtrack. The six-year old son of our hosts and his friend stared daggers at us, then longingly at the pile of sweets out of reach. We insisted they start without us. Our friends waved us off. It would be just two or three minutes now, they told us. Then passed the longest thirteen minutes of staring silently at one's own hands in recorded history, the day's hunger superseded completely by this eternal awkward delay. Finally the muezzin erupted to put us out of our misery and our hostess jumped up and brought us dates, the traditional Ramadan breakfast. Everyone watched with great satisfaction as we tore out the pits and savored those first bites.
And it was sweet, narcotically sweet -not just the dates, but the strange tenderness and solidarity that we were shown, that Moroccans keep extending us, whether or not it's Ramadan, whether or not we're doing it all wrong. We aren't planning to fast -or even stay in Morocco- for the entire month, but it's nice to know that during the time set apart, when the whole country is supposed to be turned on its head, some things won't change. So I smiled and chewed my dates and decided to keep my mouth shut about the gallon of water I'd drunk when we got home from the gendarmes. I don't doubt at all that it still counts.
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