An American in Ramadan – II

Today I went for lunch to Kabab-ji, a delicious fast food sandwich joint. There were half a dozen people working there — servers, cashiers, chefs — and I asked the lady who took my money if everyone working this month during the day was Christian. “I’m not,” she said. So, I asked, how do you handle being around food all day? “I’m accustomed to it,” she replied without a hint of reservation. “I’ve worked here for five years, and it’s never bothered me. I’m just used to it. Also, I don’t often eat this food anyway, even when it’s not Ramadan.”

Later in the day, with and hour to go until Iftar, the sight of a fasting neighbor woozy from carrying a vacuum cleaner up two flights of stairs (I helped her the rest of the way, of course), sent me back into my apartment with pangs of hunger, and I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was then that I noticed the ants in the kitchen. This is peculiar. I’ve never had ants before, and, since coming back to Beirut hadn’t even had the time to do a proper shopping, so there wasn’t much food in my kitchen. (This is exactly the sort of blogging I promised to never do, but it’s to the point.) A supposition: could this be because of Ramadan? Are the ants of my building (which are evidently not Muslim), having suddenly found themselves deprived of their normal sources of daytime food, migrating en masse to my place?

Elsewhere, a friend in the Emirates reports that it’s illegal to smoke cigarettes outside during the day this month. Illegal, or effectively illegal, the distinction being hard to discern in those parts.