Apathy during Ramadan

AYOUB ANSARI
East Toronto Observer

Last month was one hectic month for me. I was trying to balance my religious duties with school assignments — and trust me, it wasn’t easy. This year, college and Ramadan commenced just a day apart and getting back into the school mode from a four-month holiday, coupled with Ramadan, required dedication.

Muslims in East York and elsewhere — more than a billion around the globe — spent their day in fasting and night in prayers. Somewhere in between they were required to squeeze in time for work.

And for me, squeezing in the time was tough. On a typical day I forced myself to wake up at 5 a.m., brush my teeth, eat breakfast, read the Qur’an, and pray the morning prayers at home or at the local mosque. I then took a quick shower and headed out for school. By the time I was in class, three to four hours had passed and I was already feeling the effects of little sleep and no coffee.

One teacher sympathetically said, “You must be starving!” I simply replied, “Yes.” Then I consoled myself: “The stomach is starving, but the soul is being nourished.” As the local imam said in his Friday sermon, if there is one lesson to be learned from Ramadan, it is to realize that there are two components to humans. One part is the body and the other is soul. For 11 months the body is nourished, and for one month the soul is replenished through fasting.

By now it is lunchtime. My colleagues go to the cafeteria and bring food back to the class, oblivious to the fact that there is someone beside them fasting. My mouth is dry, but I am not allowed to take even a sip of water from the nearby fountain. I go into a sort-of trance, and begin to empathize with all those poor souls out there in abject poverty — people who don’t have their basic human needs fulfilled. No clean water to drink, not a morsel of food to eat. It makes for a strange contrast with our peculiar North American epidemic: abundance to the point of over-abundance. The problem isn’t so much hunger as the fact that people are dying from overeating. At least I am privileged to have the choice.

I check the time. Classes are done. Phew! Now the preparation for night prayers begins. I am a Hafiz (a person who has memorized the entire Qur’an, word-for-word) and it is my responsibility to lead part of the night prayers. I am tired, but I cannot go to sleep. Actually I can, maybe for an hour maximum. I wake up and immediately start to practise the part that I will be helping to lead today.

It’s crunch time. The final minutes before sunset seem like an eternity. I can swear time has never gone this slow. It takes an hour for a minute to pass, or so it seems. I start to supplicate and finally, the Adhaan (call to sunset prayers) goes off, signifying the end of the day’s fast. I down a date for the much-needed surge of energy and drink water, tasting its sweetness and enjoying its slither down my dry throat. I start to devour more food, and just then I remember, I can’t be eating too much — or else while I’ll be burping while I try to lead prayers.

I pray the sunset prayers and suddenly the tension kicks in. No matter how perfectly I know it, there is always a way to further refine my recitation. The time for me to lead the night prayers approaches, and I pray that I don’t make mistakes… and I lead the congregation. The congregation is listening. If I lose my focus for even a split-second, I will get off-track. Behind me there are two huffaz (plural of hafiz) waiting for me to make a mistake and pounce on it. Even a change in vowel is not tolerated.

The prayers last for approximately two hours, and at 11 p.m. they conclude. I head home, eat all that is left over, relax… and then a thought flashes through my mind. I have to work on my school assignments. I complete as much work as humanly possible, set my alarm for 5 a.m. and go to sleep.

This schedule continues for a whole month. One day one of my teachers inquires about an assignment — one that isn’t even due yet.

“How come you are not done your assignment yet, Ayoub?”

I reply, knowing full well that he won’t understand: “I was busy. I had a lot of things to do.”

“Ayoub, that’s not an excuse,” he shouts back. “All of us are busy.”

Sigh.