The Undeniable Hardship of Ramadan

So Ramadan is over and the truth is that I am very relieved. As people are moving on from writing about Ramadan, I have an intense desire to stay with it for a little longer and convey that Ramadan was incredibly difficult this year. Unlike the general sentiments I hear amongst many Muslims, I do not look forward to Ramadan every year. But paradoxically, I still continue to fast and still find it important to fast. As I transition back to a more "normal" eating schedule, I find myself asking one question over and over, “Why do I continue to fast during Ramadan?”

For the past several years, I’ve been wanting to write a blog post about Ramadan but found myself very hesitant. I’ve said that many times to many people in my life. However, when they ask me what I want to write, I find myself struggling to convey my thoughts. I wanted to talk about how Ramadan has evolved and changed throughout my years. I wanted to write about how I have a hard time falling in line with the Ramadan-Muslim trends. I wanted to talk about how Ramadan has a way of taking away all the means of distraction that I have come to use to pacify myself during the day. I wanted to talk about how difficult Ramadan has become for me. I wanted to talk about my complicated reasons to why I continue to fast every Ramadan. I wanted to be human. I wanted to be truthful.

As a child, Ramadan was very fun. I remember one of the first time that I was woken up in the AMs to my parents putting together a meal in preparation for the fast of the day. It seems exclusive and important. I remember my first experiences of fasting having the aspect of child-like daring. Would I be able to not eat and drink all day, like everybody else? My first experiences were filled with complaining and sobbing to my mom that I was hungry. I could have broken my fast at any point and it would have been okay, but I wanted to prove that I could do it. And what do you know? I did it and it was a great accomplishment. In elementary school, I would sit in the cafeteria on pizza day and give my food to classmates. The neighbor kids found it fascinating what the Muslim kids were doing during this time. It was fun. It was exclusive and I definitely felt cool.

When I went back to Palestine, to a majority-Muslim country, where everybody in the city was observing the holy month, fasting got more interesting and much cooler. Everybody was fasting. Ramadan made classes shorter and slowed down the city. We would spend the day teasing each other about whether or not we really were fasting. We would go to the mini markets and pick out snacks for the end of the day, the reward of that day. We would still have a gym class where we played soccer though. After all, the early Muslim fought battles during Ramadan, why would we not kick a ball around for 20 minutes?

Everybody became more religious during this month. People read more Quran, prayed more prayer units, and spent more time at the mosque. Ironically, Ramadan was also the time people watched more TV shows which aired specifically during Ramadan. Like Christmas specials, everybody knew all the different Ramadan series. Some aired during the day and some only aired at night, after the breaking of the fast. Every night was a feast with family and friends. All the kids got together to roam the streets, to light fireworks, to be kids and have fun during the festive Ramadan nights.

As I grew older, the pressure of being more religious during Ramadan grew stronger. My mother would always push us to pray more, to read more Quran, to not listen to music, to not watch TV. In many of the houses that I visited, I saw people hunched over the Quran. Some people would volunteer that they plan on finishing the Quran by the end of Ramadan. After the break of the fast, after dessert and coffee, the men would make their way towards the mosque to pray the extra prayers of Ramadan called Taraweeh, which would usually last about an hour. There was also an implicit shaming in their encouragement to join them. To not go to Taraweeh would mean to stay behind, to stay with the women and children, to not take advantage of Ramadan. To be fair, Taraweeh was a pleasant experience sometimes, but for the most part, it was an hour of slowly counting down the minutes, shifting my weight from one foot to the other and hoping the prayer would end soon, so that I could get back to the house and enjoy my Ramadan nights with family.

Don’t get me wrong. There were some pretty “spiritual” days. Days where I was really into it. Where the fast, the Quran, the praying, the mosque and the whole holy nature of the month really resonated with me. Other times, it was just a chore, but I still observed, I still practiced. Everybody was doing it and I believed that this just what you do. Of course, I was still learning. The first few Ramadans that I went through as a child had me spitting throughout the day so that I don’t swallow my own spit worrying that that would invalidate my fasting. My grandmother told me that if I didn’t pray all five prayers during Ramadan, my fasting was invalidated. I sometimes forgot that I was fasting and ate something accidently. Then I would immediately remember. I never felt bad, because they told me that forgetting that you’re fasting was like a gift from God, a freebie, which looking back at it rarely happened. Overall, the month had its challenges to overcome and its lessons to be learned. I remember in my mid-teens, I actually stayed up all night in the mosque during laylat al-qadr (the night of power), the most holy of Ramadan nights to finish reading the Quran. I finished the Quran that night in a last minute effort to read a quarter of the Quran I had left in one night. I felt very accomplished the next day walking home after my all-nighter. But I could not remember a single word I read all month.

Ramadan in the US during my college years were even more different than the nostalgic exciting and communal experiences I had in Palestine growing up. The city did not slow down. Nothing was different in how people behaved during the day. I would explain it to people around me, who always met me with the same astonishment that I didn't drink water during the day. You would only notice Ramadan if you stayed close to the mosque and if you had Muslim friends and even then, it still wasn’t the same. I mean, you would still get other Muslims trying to be more “religious” during the month, saying and doing things that they usually don’t do during the rest of the year. But for the most part, the experience of Ramadan in those circumstances was a very personal one. It would have been very easy for me to not fast during this time and it wouldn’t have been noticed in any capacity by anybody. But I wanted to maintain my religion and my culture. I wanted to maintain the tradition, the practice, the spirituality. This desire for a wholesome Ramadan didn’t come without its share of discomfort, frustrations and loneliness. This would be the beginning of a new journey of exploring the meaning of Ramadan as an adult.

Why did I fast? I knew very well what the most common answers to that question. To feel with "the poor". For self-discipline. For closeness to God. Because that’s what our religion obligated us to do. To be aware of our mortality and how much we depend on the most basic elements. To purify the soul. To be forgiven. To belong to the community. To become stronger human beings. Because that’s what the Prophet did. Because fasting is an old practice that many religions have incorporated for centuries. Because. Because. Because. But the question was, why did I continue to fast year after year? What was the real reason? Every year, I was practicing less and less. I attended less Taraweeh prayers. I read less Quran. More music. More movies. More worldliness. In her nature, my mother still kept trying to push us to pray more, to read more Quran. It’s Ramadan, she would say, take advantage of it. Shame and perfectionism issues would be triggered. Maybe I wasn’t do it right. Maybe I wasn’t doing it completely. Was it even worth it? Why fast?

In addition, I was becoming more and more aware of my relationship with food, drink and sexual desire and how they played a role in my life. To dull the senses. To pacify the feelings. Ramadan took these escapes away. Pushing me into a state of discomfort, to deal with my feelings, to deal with the triggers, to be more raw, to be more vulnerable. It wasn’t pleasant at all. Especially, as I became more aware of existing debilitating depression and addiction issues that exist in my life. I couldn’t modulate my mood with different pleasures during the day. This made Ramadan a month of raw emotions and feelings. With very little support from my community, from other people who were also fasting.

Whenever I asked people if Ramadan was hard, they would usually deny it. It’s no big deal, they said. I couldn’t see how. But then again, that’s usually what I said to people who did not fast in my life.  That it was no big deal. But it was a big deal. I don’t know why my fasting friends didn’t express the difficulties of fasting. I mean really complain about it. Why they didn’t experience the same vulnerability that I felt during Ramadan. Did they really not feel the difficulty like I did? One thing was for sure, I did not like fasting any more. It became something that I did because it has always been done, but I did not experience the same excitement that I felt as a child. I did not feel the same “spirituality” and “religiosity.” I just knew that this was something that I needed to do. Don’t get me wrong, I would still try my darndest to pray more, I would still try to listen to Quran, I would still try to catch at least one Taraweeh prayer, I would still feel the hunger and thirst and realize how dependent I really was on the creator, the provider, but I did not look forward to fasting at all.

Fasting was so disrupting. Where it was in the winter as a child, it was now in the summer during 16 hour days, in very high temperatures, with no water, no food, with a pressure to act a specific way during the day, to lower my gaze, to stay away from sexual content, to stay away from many things that I found comforting, things that I found distracting. It would ruin whatever diet I was on. It would disrupt my working out routine. I wasn’t able to join my colleagues for lunches. I wasn’t able to patronize cafes during the day, one of my few places that I felt okay. I’m fasting, I would tell people. They would look at me with pity and/or admiration. I could never do that, some people would say. I think you could, I would answer back. I’m not special. I’m not super human. If I can do it, you can do it. If I can wade through this rawness, you can too. If I can put aside that which I’m used, for the sake of a cause, for the sake of God, for the sake of perceived spirituality, so can you. Anybody can. Maybe this was one of the many reasons that I continued to fast. I still didn’t like though.

I didn’t like to be pushed by an arbitrary month and an arbitrary tradition to face my feelings, to feel uncomfortable, to be raw. I felt like it wasn’t genuine, it wasn’t something I did because of my own convictions and beliefs. It felt like something I was pushed into, pressured into, something I observed because other people in my circles observed it. I felt like the reason I fast wasn’t fully discovered, wasn’t fully realized and that made it more difficult to me.

I think that it’s important to consider the humanity associated with fasting. It’s important to be able to say that it’s hard. That it’s challenging. That I don’t like it. For the sake of support, for the sake of communal connection, for the sake of being able to be truthful with myself and others. Don’t get me wrong, there are days where fasting has a very unique flavor to it. I felt a connection with something higher, I’m able to see how far I can go, my strength and weakness, my limits and morality, a certain humbling of the body and mind. But all this doesn’t come with its share of peer pressure and communal shame. The push to do these limited acts that have been taught to be “Ramadan activities” without a real plan to keep the momentum going afterwards. To translating the discomfort into healthy realizations and habits. To be honest with one’s self and others. To connect genuinely with the Divine. Maybe that is why I fast. Maybe not. Sigh.

I think it’s okay that I don’t know exactly why I fast in the modern day. I think it’s okay that my relationship to fasting continues to evolve and grow. That I continue to negotiate my relationship with spirituality, religion and faith, for the sake of genuine connection to my Higher Power. I am very grateful and thankful that I inherited this tradition and this practice that disrupts my routine and invites me to reconsider my world and be more introspective. But sometimes, I have a hard time with fasting. I have a hard time with no relief. I feel deprived. With no usual methods of comforting myself and escaping and in those moments, I say to myself, it’s okay. I accept you in your time of stress and difficulty. I know that this is meant to be part of the fasting experience, and I pray that I can use these times in the future for more insight, for more humility and more love towards myself and others.

So here I am on the last day of Ramadan. As the sun sets on this last day, I wonder where I will be next year. Whether or not my convictions will change as I move forward in this life. Whether I’ll be able to pin down the reasons I fast in a dozen moons. What I do know is that I’m powerless and without control. It is a unique feeling of humility, weakness and calm. Of sadness, anger and fear. Of humanity at its worst and humanity at its best. Of regret and frustration. Of acceptance and acknowledgment. Ramadan this year was very difficult. But yet, I find it…illuminating and empowering. Sometimes it’s important to strip down to the rawness, to the discomfort, to the fundamentals. Maybe in that place, I can finally know more about myself and learn why I fast.

The Token Arab is a personal blog run by a Palestinian American het cis man from Arizona. 

Photo Credit: Sand Storm by Jovelino | 1x.com/photo/43091/