Deserted neighbourhood and the living room in my apartment.
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The Holy Month of Ramadan began on October 27th, 2003. The size and position of the moon determine Day One. The Saudis – as guardians of the sacred places, Mecca and Medina – make the ruling. They wavered between October 26th and 27th almost till the last moment, leaving everyone feeling a little unsettled.
The purpose of Ramadan, one of the five Pillars of Islam, is fasting. Between dawn and sunset no nourishment of any kind should cross your lips. (Young children, the elderly, the ill and pregnant women are exempted). This way you will know what it means to be hungry. Because Ramadan occurs every year, you will never be able to forget the poor, leading you to give generously to charity, another Pillar.
When the sun goes down, families break their fast with a special meal called al Fitr. (I was amused to se posters in McDonalds’ windows advertising al Fitr burgers as well as, unintentionally, the unbounded ingenuity of corporate masterminds.) They stay up all night feasting and partying. Many families put up tents on the boulevard outside the wall surrounding their homes. Inside, food is set out at dusk for any passing stranger who cares to partake.
During the day, the streets are pretty much deserted, nothing but little eddies of sand whirling on the empty sidewalks. Banks open only between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. Even grocery stores and malls either close during the day or shorten their hours. A hush pervades the air, a stillness that’s startling in the broad daylight of cities as large as Sharjah or Dubai.
Since people – including children – don’t get a lot of sleep, the school adopted modified hours, too. The usual 7:45 to 3:00 schedule decreased to 8:30 to 1:00, with no breaks. No point, really, as just about everyone was fasting. Out of courtesy, non-Muslim teachers refrained from eating or drinking in front of students and colleagues.
Perhaps the best way I can illustrate the importance of Ramadan – how seriously it’s taken – is to tell you about two boys who came to see me the week before it started. I have to admit the boys’ classes were difficult. We certainly had good days – when they acted out a portion of The Iliad, for example – but in general they were a tough slog. I was often confronted with an arrogance, contempt and chauvinism that left me feeling violated.
Given this backdrop, the visit of the two boys was all the more remarkable.
“You have to give us zero on the last quiz, Miss,” said one.
“I have to do what?”
“Give us zero. We cheated, Miss.”
The best I could summon was a blank stare. The boys shuffled their feet.
“Ramadan is coming and we have to put our hearts right with Allah before it starts. You must give us zero.”
“Okay, then. Zero it is.” I made a show of drawing firm black lines in my marks’ book and making big fat zeros beside their names. But I was stunned – and full of respect. Such a scene would never occur in the West – and didn’t in the 15 years I taught in Canada. I’m not saying there aren’t Canadian students who don’t cheat – there are many, in fact – just that the ones who do cheat would never confess their misdeed. It’s up to the teacher to catch them red-handed. Then, with no other options available, they’ll grudgingly admit what they’ve done. In some cases, they act resentful – as if cheating was somehow their right – an essential like air or water – or that I was a vicious termagant who didn’t understand their busy, angst-ridden lives.
Ramadan prompted generosity in other areas as well. I copied this from the November 13th, 2003 issue of the English-language newspaper:
His Highness, Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, has pardoned 179 prisoners of various nationalities to mark Ramadan and the UAE’s 32nd National Day.
Sixteen of the prisoners were pardoned on grounds of health problems.
The 1:30 end to my work day would have been more enjoyable if there had actually been anything to do. With just about all business and stores closed, pickings were slim. Most of the western teachers, however, belonged to a sports’ club called the Sharjah Wanderers. It had an exercise room, a cooled outdoor pool (without the cooling, the water would quickly have boiled under the fierce glare of the sun) and a restaurant.
I took to having Muhammad pick me up every day at 2:00 and take me to the Wanderers’ Club. I’d walk on a treadmill in the air-conditioned gym for 45 minutes (still too hot to walk outdoors), swim for half an hour, then eat dinner, often a bacon, lettuce and tomato salad.
Bacon – and all pork products, of course – are banned in the UAE. In the far reaches of Dubai, an expat store, Spinney’s, had a room where you could buy virtually any pig part your heart desired. Over the low, narrow entrance to the room a huge sign, in English and Arabic, proclaimed: WARNING! PORK WITHIN! I bought some ham slices once. They came doubled-wrapped in a three-inch ribbon reading, “This product contains pork,” also in both English and Arabic.
Restaurants can’t serve it because Muslims don’t want to eat anything from a kitchen where pork has been cooked. The Wanderers’ Club, however, was open only to foreigners from non-Muslim countries – you had to include a copy of your passport and a photo with your membership application – so both pork and alcohol were served by special permission of the Supreme Council.
A group of Colonel Blimp-like Brits made up a small but vocal portion of the membership. They insisted on calling Canada a “lesser colony” and referred to Australia, scorn dripping from their tongues, as “The Antipodes.” We disdained ones went about our business in our usual quiet Canadian ways – and our not-so-quiet Australian ones. By March, The Last Remnants of Empire at least lowered their voices, although they still addressed us as “our little friends.”
After a while, I didn’t bother with pork anymore. It’s never been a big part of my diet – outside China, anyway – and found I much preferred halal meatballs and lamb. And Egyptian rice. It’s exactly like Arborio rice and the cheapest rice you can buy in the UAE. Delicious. On the days I didn’t go to the Wanderers’, I spent a fragrant half hour stirring a pot of rice, chicken broth, chopped onion and freshly-grated Mozzarella cheese.
As the weeks of Ramadan wore on, tempers began to fray around 5:00, the time the sun started its descent. Even the serene-souled Muhammad was affected.
One day, a bit of a traffic jam caused Muhammad to try passing a large truck on our left. There was enough space to pass and I guess he figured on advancing us by several hundred yards. As soon as we pulled even with the rear of the truck, its driver swerved sharply in front of us, narrowly missing a collision.
Muhammad backed off. As traffic inched forward a few feet, he tried again, at much higher speed. The truck driver again swerved into our path, coming within millimetres of sheering off the side of the taxi. Muhammad sat up straight, his back no longer touching the back of the seat, gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands and swore in Urdu. He slowed to let the taxi fall behind the truck, then quickly shot along the length of the right side of the truck, blaring the horn as we sped past in a blur.
(How did I know he was swearing in Urdu? Special knowledge transmitted from daughter to mother, from Creature to me. That story, which features a high-speed chase with the Canadian Security and Intelligence Police, will be recounted in some future blog tentatively titled Boyfriends from Hell.)
I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the incident concluded. I was wrong. Muhammad zipped in front of the truck and slammed on his brakes. Lurch! I was thrown forward (vehicles in the UAE don’t have seatbelts). A virtual stream of profanities poured from his lips as he jerked the taxi to the side of the road where it skidded to a halt in the loose sand. Muhammad waved his clenched fist in the rear view mirror, still muttering angrily.
“What’s happening?” I asked in a tremulous voice.
Muhammad didn’t answer. He flung the cab door open and leaped out. Looking over my shoulder I saw the truck driver, another Pakistani man, jumping down from on high. Seconds later, the two men stood nose to nose shrieking at each other, their arms wind milling in furious, melodramatic gestures.
My heart hadn’t pounded so hard since the days of my regular cardiovascular workouts in Chinese taxis.
Muhammad re-entered the cab and plunked onto the driver’s seat so violently the whole vehicle shook. We zoomed forward a few yards, then he slammed on the brakes and leapt out again. The nose-to-nose, wave-the-arms-and-scream routine was repeated.
Finally, Muhammad returned, settled himself and engaged the clutch. Our wheels spun, spitting sand against the windows before we careened around a corner, leaving the truck behind.
I said nothing. After we’d whizzed along for more than five minutes at a seriously unsafe speed, weaving perilously through snarled traffic, he relaxed. I could see it in the set of his shoulders and his grip on the wheel.
“Sorry, Mem,” he said in his normal voice.
“It’s okay,” I ventured. “That truck driver cut us off. Very dangerous.”
“Yes, very VERY dangerous.” Muhammad ran with this theme all the way back to my apartment while I tried to compose my face in sympathetic lines.
It was enough to make me yearn for an al Fitr burger.
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