DiaryIssue1
I remember lying on a front garden wall tired, hungry and thirsty. It was the year we had a heatwave and people were referring to it as an Indian Summer. I'm not sure what year it was and there have probably been many heat waves since but that is the one that sticks in my mind. I must have been 6 or 7 or perhaps 8 but it was certainly around about 30 years ago. At that time Ramadhan fell in the summer when the days were the longest and that particular year the hottest. The energy seemed to have drained out of me and I felt unable to even lift a finger. It was only 1pm, I was fasting and Maghrib wasn't till around 10pm.
At least I wouldn't be fasting the next day, not because this was the last day of Ramadhan but because I intended to take the next day “off” from fasting. At that time I used to fast every other day, one day fasting and the next day not.
But no harm done, I was only a child and so fasting was not compulsory for me. But this habit of taking a day off carried on even into my college years. And I wasn't the only one, most of my friends did the same thing. Well, apart from the ones that never fasted at all. We'd often ask each other “Are you fasting today?” as if it was an optional thing. And more often than not the reply would be “No, not today, I'm taking a day off”.
On the days that I did fast, I tried to behave. Behaving in my mind meant no eating or drinking, no lying and no swearing. That was about it. I carried no concept of praying 5 times a day or even at least while I was fasting. The main thing was to somehow get through the day without eating or drinking. To help me get through the day I used a whole host of tactics, my favourite being swimming. In the logic of my mind any water that I swallowed whilst swimming did not count as drinking. Now, I don't know what the Islamic ruling on swimming while fasting is but at that time I used my own mind to decide that it was alright. And so, I'd go to the swimming pool next to Monoux College with my friends.
The other thing I did to get me through the fast was to play football. Admittedly, the logic seems a bit warped as all that running around made me really thirsty and the last few minutes before Maghrib were “a killer”, as I used to put it. But playing football took my mind off the fact that I was fasting. I never started fasting properly until I went to university. But, that's another story….
