It's Ramadan again. I just noticed that the visitors to my blog have doubled. Seems that if you google: "i hate ramadan", my post with the same title is the first result on the list. I read that post today and I ought to make one correction: when I go to a restaurant with my friends who are fasting, I get the impression that I'm the hungriest one among them.
This year is completely different from last year's however. Where as last year people were smoking, drinking and even eating at restaurants on the sidewalk. This year the government has done a 360, making all the above outlawed.
Not everybody fasts! These days the weather is very hot. There plenty of old people that don't. There are also those that are sick. What's a person coming from a province and needs to do some kind of medical test supposed to do when the doctor tells him or her that he or she needs to drink or eat something.
Restaurants aren't allowed to serve food during daylight hours and they can't even give out take-aways till after three in the afternoon according to a friend of mine who was desperate for some lunch. Before the war, it wasn't allowed to do so and so in public too, but at least the restaurants were allowed to stay open as long as people on the street can't see the customers eat.
It's as though the government is imitating the Taliban. The government also wants to block internet porn too. It's not going well at all. On the bright side, the government does seem a great deal whimsical and Ramadan next year will probably be a different deal altogether again.
Why does it seem like I'm the only one hating Ramadan on the net? I don't mind if the whole world went fasting on Ramadan honestly, it might be a little inconvenient but there's no reason why I or anyone else should have to starve too.
---added later---
I wrote this post without actually seeing with everything with my own eyes. Now I'm back from Baghdad and most of it is kind of true. I later found a neighbourhood with a bunch of restaurants open. So it seems the rules have been applied more leniently in some parts. When buying Kanafa from one of the local sweet shops, I was told that the least I can order is half a kilo until futoor and that otherwise it would create a hassle for the shop.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Oohh Humbug
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4 comments:
That is how I found you. It was an attempt to find people, anyone, who thought like me.
I can't help constantly thinking 'rubbish barbaric tradition'. Can't eat anywhere here, either. Even the cinemas and games' arenas are closed. Work starts later so that you have more time to sit and stare at a wall while wishing you had steak and chips with lots of gravy.
Sounds like you might have to learn how to cook Shaggy. Where's Nadia when you need her.
I can understand fasting as a spiritual exercise, if one is into spiritual exercises, but I think having a big luxury meal at sundown cancels out all the good from the fasting. If people were serious, they would eat plain simple food during the night.
Dan, that's the way it's meant to be.
I'm fasting right now, though, and a feast sounds perfect. My stomach feels like it's eating my oesophagus. Times have made it harder to fast, things move too fast and are too bright and demanding.
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