“Are you Muslim”? asked a brawny guy suddenly, as I was trying to remember at the grocery what my maid wanted me to buy from the vegetable section.
“Did she ask me to get coriander, or was it mint?” I was thinking, while smelling the bright-yellow sweet mangoes from India.
He was wearing a vest and shorts and seemed like he had just stepped out of a gym. Nobody had asked me that question before, especially in a grocery store.
Once an Arab woman asked me at a hypermarket whether the bunch of greens I was picking up was spinach. When I said yes, she insisted that I was taking home the wrong vegetable. “Are you sure?” she asked again.
To settle the issue I called the salesperson in the section, and when we both asked her, she said it was not spinach. But even then the triumphant Arab woman did not turn around suddenly and ask me if I was Muslim.
That however, happened to me in a church once when I was interviewing some people for a story. A small group was talking to me, and out of the blue, a Filipina asked me if I was a Muslim. It took me a while after answering her to get my train of thought back on track to continue the interview.
“Yes”, I told the man, and raised my eyebrows in question as to why my religion should interest him. “I am really sorry,” he said. “You must be fasting,” he apologised saying he had sipped from a soft drink bottle in public.
I hadn’t even noticed that and laughed and said that it does not bother me, and wondered why people think I would keel over and faint whenever I see someone eating or drinking when I am fasting.
It is not as if I am that delicate and it’s not like I have been fasting for days on end, going without food or water and that I would go berserk on the first sight of food, like Cookie Monster from the wonderful children’s educational TV series, Sesame Street. (I mention the TV show because I watched that a lot, especially after iftar, when I earlier worked in Saudi Arabia).
Some years ago when I was in Toronto during Ramadan I had written a jocular column on how tough it was to fast when everyone around you is always eating. Torontorians love to eat on-the-go and you see people are always munching something while walking on the streets: someone munching on a juicy quarter-pounder, a cookie sprinkled with chocolate, a potassium-packed banana or a gorgeously-red apple.
Tough exposure
I was living in China Town and as you walked the streets, cooks would be stirring up beef and vegetables in woks, cauldrons of soup would be simmering and strings of Peking ducks would be hanging at the glass windows for passers-by to salivate at.
Coming from a place where I am coddled and protected against seeing other people eat, this was really tough, at least for the first week of my stay. I was always looking away whenever someone ate.
When I told friends and acquaintances that I was fasting, they would look me up and down at my skinny form and wondering why I was doing that.
People today however, in this age of plenty, think that fasting is good for reducing weight. Doctors disagree on that and warn that fasting only reduces the fluids in the body, and not any substantial weight. And once you are back on your regular diet, you will easily put on the weight that you had lost.
Muslims are always reminded during Ramadan not to fast and then feast in the nights, as is so often seen today. Fasting is to do more with your soul than your body.
