Breaking the Fast

Dear dedicated reader,

The other day, my cell phone rang. This is not unusual, as its electronic tones can be heard many times a day, usually with some kind of call based marketing which is very popular here (since incoming calls are free).

However, this call was not one of the many singing advertisements which plague my ear drums on a daily basis; it was Daybal. She did not identify herself, but I knew from the accent and breadth of English vocabulary that it must be her. She sounded frantic.

“Can you tell me what this message means?” She asked me. “I got this text message and I don’t know what it means.”

“Sure, go ahead and read it to me,” I said.

“Reply via same, centre enabled thelesimia…spleen…” She read, spelling out each word carefully and saying “dot” for each period. “What does enabled mean?” she asked me.

“Uh, it means made to be able to do…but my question is: what is thelesimia?” I asked her to spell it again. I was still completely confused. “Listen,” I said, “why don’t I just come over and look at it?”

“You’d do that for me?” She said, incredulously.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “I’ll be right over.”

Ten minutes later, I was sitting on the floor of her house, puzzling over the mysterious message. “I don’t think this is an English word,” I told her.

‘Do you think it’s African then?” She asked me.

I held back a laugh. “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. She nodded distractedly. She was cooking up a storm and plopped a steaming plate of fried something or other down in front of me on the floor. I looked at her.

“I can’t eat this,” I told her.

“EAT IT!” She said, hitting me on the shoulder.

I shook my head. “I can’t,” I replied. “It’s Ramzan and I know you are fasting. I can’t sit here and eat in front of you.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Eat it! We are breaking the fast soon anyway.” After all, it was starting to get dark. I hesitantly picked up a pakora and put its oily crust in my mouth. She smiled encouragingly and turned back to her pot. “Stay,” she asked me as she stirred vigorously, turning pakoras over and over in the bubbling kadai. “My husband will take you home after we break the fast.”

I shrugged. “I don’t want to impose,”

“Stay! Don’t be silly, you!” She said, turning and shaking her metal stirrer at me, drops of oil flying.

I agreed and she handed me a large tarp to spread out on the stone floor of their main room. As she began to unload her steaming, oil-soaked pakoras into a dish, her husband came in. We exchanged a smiled greeting and his two daughters who were with him, Mizba and Asba, came over to greet my excitedly. Unlike usual, their heads and upper bodies were completely covered by large cloth headcoverings, covering their hair completely with only their adorable faces sticking out

They gathered around the tarp, along with Daybal’s sister in laws who had just arrived and greeted me by slapping me heartily on the back. I have this longstanding joke with them about how big my wrists are (too big for tiny Indian bangles) and so they grabbed me by my wrist and motioned for me to sit with them. As I did, Daybal’s small three year old son appeared from behind the back of his father. I put out my hand for a high five. To my surprise, he pinched me and ran away. Everyone laughed, except me, who looked at this small, mischevious devil hiding in the body of a cute baby boy with hidden ire. In response, he threw his topi (hat) at me so that it hit me hard in the chest.

“How…cute…” was all I could muster as they continued to laugh.

In the meantime, Daybal had spread all the dishes out on the floor in the center of the ring of the hungry: while Mizba and Asba were not keeping the fast, no one else had eaten or had anything to drink all day, as they would do for all of September because of Ramzan. They passed out glasses of rose milk and plates of dates, pear, custard and pakoras.

I waited for them to dig in.

When they didn’t, I looked around and realized that they were praying as they waited for something. Just then, I felt Daybal’s elbow in my side.

“Cover your head!” She told me matter of factly.

Embarrassed that I might have offended them, I wrapped my dupatta (scarf) around my head in the way that all the other women had. Daybal eyed me for a moment and then clicked her tongue in surprised approval.

“It suits you,” she said.

At that moment, what they were waiting for came. The call to prayer floated in the window as the light of dusk died from the sky and the setting sun gave way to night. For those who hadn’t eaten all day, they ate delicately, slowly, savouring the meal that they had waited twelve hours for. No one spoke. All that could be heard was teeth colliding in chewing and swallowing and tearing of pakoras and the slippery china grass (custard) dancing on everyone’s tongues.

I sat, nibbling on a pakora, feeling strange that I could not share in that feeling of breaking the fast.

Best,
Cat