I am not sure how I was convinced, as a non-Muslim, into fasting for GulfNews.com’s daily Ramadan blog, aside the fact at the time it was a week away, and saying yes seemed abstract and to carry no consequences.
That, truth be told, was a bit delusional. There was no way this was going to be without pain. I don’t wake up until I have been hit by a freight train of caffeine. I am a smoker.
However, it was not until the first morning that I realised just how painful it could be — in the sense of, really realising it. Hunger or even thirst were never going to be issues for me because there was something more urgent. There is very little as loud as a true addiction scratching in your veins, and it arrived at 6:59am on Monday morning, at the very onset of the fast.
But here’s the oddest thing, despite 30 years of smoking it never became painful. The addiction remained just an irritation, salved by being part of something larger, more important, with a real momentum of its own.
I never expected to say this, but fasting during Ramadan is without doubt spiritual, even if you are not a Muslim, even when it is not, for you, about a connection with God, or anything at all really other than a ‘why not’.
Being one of a peaceful army of those fasting cannot help but affect you quite deeply. During the week I felt connected to something larger, part of a shared but singular goal, part of a very, very welcoming family.
I am still not quite sure why, but all the Muslims I spoke to were irrationally happy I was fasting with them. No one asked me what I was thinking — there was total acceptance, no trace of rejection. It seemed totally natural.
I am not a particularly touchy feely person, and I do not use words like spiritual or family lightly, but I felt both. Aside the surprisingly warm hug of humanity, I think for two reasons.
Firstly, when you fast you tie spirituality to a feeling and a distinct location. Hunger, thirst, cravings are fused and welded with something that normally has no place, and less form than air.
The second thing that happens, or happened for me, was to see the world around me not through my eyes, but through those of someone I am not — someone who fasts. There are so many expatriates from around the globe living in the UAE that it is easy to exist within a bubble and to carry London or Paris with you in Dubai.
Fasting forces you off the Tube and onto the Metro — if only for a short while into a world that is not your own, and which in truth has far more resonance and connection with the land we live in.
As a human being I am crippled into not accepting anything that cannot be proven, and if the likes of Kant can spend a lifetime and come up with something as intellectually torturous as the Noumenon, I have long accepted I am unlikely to ever be able to join the dots and join those happy spiritual people around me.
That said, as a person I always want there to be more meaning in the world than I can, usually, allow myself to believe there is. I always look for something a little deeper and significant than perhaps physically evident.
However, even if you’re not like me, there are other, purely logical reasons why I would recommend fasting — not necessarily for the entire month, but for a few days at least.
1. Fasting gives you a chance to realise all of the habits you have, and kill the ones you don’t want. I clearly realised I smoke. I was not so aware of the 101 other rituals I used to get me through a day or how easily I allowed myself to be distracted. I have since the fast given up smoking completely. I like to think I am a little more focused.
2. Fasting is incredibly healthy and helps cleanse your body, regenerate cells along with a myriad of other benefits I could cut and paste from Professor Web MD or Doctor Google, but better you just go and look up yourself.
3. Many non-Muslims look to escape Dubai during the holy month, seeing only the irritating restrictions and the things you cannot do. It is impossible to see it that way once you have really joined in. Fasting makes Ramadan special and if you plan to live in the region for any length of time, four weeks of specialness a year is far better than four weeks of irritation.
So, the final paradox — it turns out that to deny is to receive. Fasting gives us all the opportunity to stop, take a look at ourselves, and to make adjustments. It is a gift. And it is one for everyone.
You just have to accept it. On faith.
