For the past three weeks, I have been sleepwalking to the kitchen at 3.45am, just in time for my ‘suhour’ and to feed the goldfish. I know it is a wrong time to prepare my essential morning meal for the long fast for the rest of the day, because the call to prayer will soon be heard at 4.14 even as the kettle comes to a boil and as I sleepily look into the fridge.

I blame it on the snooze button that allows you those blissful five minutes more on your soft, downy pillow, but it is now a race against time as I hurriedly dip a rusk into my tea. The tea and rusk dipping is an old habit from Saudi Arabia where my wife and I worked before coming to Dubai.

But the goldfish do not care about my dilemma as I slurp my tea fast. They start to pick up with their mouths the tiny pebbles on the floor of the fish tank and shoot them at the glass pane, to inform me that they too are hungry. Then they all gather at one side, look at me and angrily blow tiny bubbles that rise to the surface.

I do not know who taught them to do this. I got them free from a young lady who said she could not care for them anymore as she was going abroad for her studies. I was under the impression that goldfish were low maintenance pets, but did not know I would have to jump every time they shot pebbles at the glass.

They remind me of the people at an iftar I went to earlier in the month. I had won a voucher for iftar for four in a tent at a posh golf club. It all happened as I was listening to classic music on the radio as I was driving, and the RJ announced the prize would be mine if I answered a question correctly.

“Which of these is not an airport in China?” he asked, and when I heard ‘Tsing Tao’, I quickly shot off an SMS to the radio station that it was not an airport, and that is how I found myself in the tent. It was still 15 minutes to the magrib prayer call before we were supposed to start eating but people were getting up and moving swiftly from table to table like my fish, and piling up food on their plates.

“Get up,” said my younger son in a forced whisper and in panic. “We better move fast or the food will get over,” he said.

I was enjoying watching the lovely sunset over the Dubai Creek as the sky turned orange, but hearing my son I quickly jumped up and ushered my family to the massive buffet tables.

“You take the samosa and salads table, while I get the soups,” said my elder son, taking charge of the situation. He put plates in our hands and pushed his mother to the meats table and me to a sushi station. We piled up our plates and hurried back and placed our food gently on our table.

“No,” I shouted, as my younger son started to put a date in his mouth, startling the waitress who was pouring water into our fancy glasses.

“That is not the Dubai prayer call,” I told him, as a prayer call came from the huge TVs around the tent.

After eating my high-calorie carbs and fatty meal, I started to feel sleepy, but I could see people were still getting up and sauntering to the dessert table.

“Umm Ali,” I squeaked, telling my wife to get some of the famous Arab dessert for me.

My fish have me to help control their diet but who will control my eating?

Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.