You Want Me To Say Something About Ramadan, Don't You??
You Want Me To Say Something About Ramadan, Don't You??
I can feel it
So curious that you all are chomping at the bit for me to say something about Ramadan. You want me to say, “Ramadan Kareem!!” so bad. I can feel it. It’s so interesting…is that all I am to you?
It’s so funny how you can have supposedly progressive friends and family and newsletter subscribers in your life, yet when push comes to shove, and it’s the first week of Ramadan, all they want is to put you in their teeny tiny little box labeled “Muslim Guy” and make you sing and dance like the rest of them. Embarrassing, is what it is. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.
Instead of doing that, I will now take this time to list off some people in my life who did not send me a celebratory message for the beginning of this auspicious month: Beloved Subscriber David Freling; all of the sketch group Please Don’t Destroy; Barack Obama (I guess it takes a clock that looks like a bomb for this man to even give a shit!); noted Broadway actor and supposed friend Jesse Aaronson; the Pope; any of my former mentors (like teachers from high school or college, old instructors or coaches, etc.); Best Picture winners and apparent progressive champions of diversity and inclusion (??) the Daniels; Kevin Harlan; the novelist Helen DeWitt; Ray Liotta; and perhaps most notably, Riz Ahmed (you’d think he’d have his finger on the pulse on this one).
I’ve taken steps to let these people know, privately, the harm that was done to me by not even gesturing to the beginning of Ramadan, not even a half-baked “how we feelin today” text or the emoji of the Pakistani flag. They’ve been suspended from Low Lift Ask for a while, too, so they won’t poison the well of this accepting, inclusive community with their vile hatred. Here are the other horrible things that are about to happen to me this month:
“Not even water?”
This is when someone whom you’ve told, multiple times, year after year, that you can’t drink water while fasting, responds with, “What? Not even water?”
Lack of caffeine
This is actually the worst part. I can’t have my dainty little scheduled 4pm teatime every afternoon. Every day, I usually make—from scratch—crumpets, scones with clotted cream and jam, finger sandwiches (with the crust cut off) of cucumbers and butter at around 4pm. It sucks not being able to do that.
Don’t look at this (https://www.instagram.com/dualipa/)
Something cool about Ramadan is that you must deny yourself the base pleasures of food, drink, and Dua Lipa. It’s going to take all I have in me to make sure I don’t click on that link when the sun is out. But when the sun sets, I can go hogwild on the link, and I can click and refresh and refresh and refresh as many times as I want to. This is also something people forget about Islamic fasting: it ends at sundown.
Kidnapping
A man could kidnap me this month. I’m not saying it happens every Ramadan, and it certainly hasn’t happened yet, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t happen during Ramadan.
Heist Plot
I could begin to get recruited for a daring, Ocean’s Eleven-style heist of the Turning Stone Casino in Verona, New York. If this does happen, I would have to disclose to the organizers that I’m fasting for the month, and there’s a chance this could dissuade them from including me on the final roster.
“I’d love to try fasting a day with you!”
No you don’t. You don’t want to do this. And that’s OK.
Ritam’s Footnote
Not even water?