Friday, September 11, 2009

Ramadan Update


So...Ramadan has been good...I guess.

I'll say this, I have enjoyed the food and the night life. Casablanca comes alive around 9:00pm every night. I also come alive and then STAY alive until about 5am every morning. People don't eat and drink anything until 7pm so the earliest you could possibly go to sleep would be 12am but really it is more like 1am or 2 am, because you know, who can work all day, then eat, then drink, then rest, then go back to sleep. No, that is not the way people roll over here during Ramadan. Instead you go out, meet friends, go shopping, have coffee, hang out, whatever. Then everyone is tired all day (which actually works perfectly for my very pregnant pace just now).

On Working during Ramadan:
Business meetings are relaxed, the shops and banks and businesses close down at 4pm latest and re-open afterwards, so I have started doing night classes and I love the night schedule.

On Street Fights during Ramadan:
There are daily fights around 5pm and I mean EVERYDAY. We go up to the roof to watch them and sometimes they even have machetes, no shit. I am all "isn't it like really bad if you machete someone to death while you are fasting?" and Youssef is all, "nah, well, I mean I guess it'll get you like 7 years in the clinker".

What else? OH yeah, everyone's breath stinks!!!!! Horribly!!!!!!!! And no one wears perfume or cologne during the day, only at night.

On Breaking the Fast during Ramadan:
I have gotten super awesome butt kicking bad ass at preparing the breakfast (called f'toor in Moroccan and Iftar in Arabic). In fact, since the first week Youssef can't time an iftar on his own to save his poor little starving self if his life depended on it.

On Me-Walking-in-the-Street during Ramadan:
One of the best Ramadan perks EVER is that I do not get harassed on the streets!!!!! Not by beggars or incredibly perverted men that got a thing for the belly bump. It kind of pisses me off though that the entire male population of Casablanca is so damned able to be respectful and decent and NOT ogle me as I go buy, but normally just choose to do so anyways, you know, when it's not Ramadan. It means that these schmucks are capable of controlling themselves and their utter daily harassment is a CHOICE they make every time they choose to harass, whisper at or follow a woman on the street. Which, okay, of COURSE it is. But I guess the fact that it not so deeply ingrained that the worst of the worst of the harassers are able to be respectful, because thinking sexual thoughts would break their fast, is just a little insulting.

So there you go. I have turned into a vampire, I get to break all the rules because I am pregnant and a foreigner and we get invited to eat out alot. Oh and I also added a fourth meal to my day, AT MIDNIGHT!

1 comment:

cutiepiespacepop said...

this is awesome.