First Days Fast
// October 4th, 2005 // Travel
Well I’ve just returned from my first Iftar- literally meaning “break fast”, and no it is not ok to call it “ramadinner”, although if I was the marketing manager things might be different. The first days fast was not too bad, a bit tired by the end of the day as my brain ran out of sweet, sweet glucose to power itself upon. Iftar is a big family affair so everyone is off the streets of around sunset. I thought it was more in my sabbatical style to head down to the end of one of the piers into the ocean and break my fast surrounded by the rolling sea.
But while I sat reflecting and listening to the crash of water upon rock I met some hungry cats, so we breakfasted together on falafel and fuul. If the cats had turned into three wise men who told me to rebuild a long destroyed temple it would have been a parable.
” Fasting is an institution as old as Adam. It has been resorted to for self-purification or for some ends, noble as well as ignoble.”- Gandhi.
I have and always will love the coastline of Alexandria. Hope you do get to experience an Egyptian family Iftar, awesome experience. I only liked the cats as they kept the mice away.
mix said “cats… ruin every lunch of mine at AUC. They won’t stop jumping onto my table. The other curiousity, is that, to my knowledge, fasting isn’t that healthy, so why do I always here it called “purifying?”
I think Gandhian Dietetics is big on fasting, Ive read stuff saying its “cleansing” for the liver and for the guts in general.