“But you live here,” he said reprovingly, which was interesting since it rather suggested that he saw Ramadan as just another aspect of the local culture rather than as something specific to Islam.Giving a somewhat sheepish shrug, I crept away with my tail between my legs. To be fair, I have undertaken the fast once, but that was when it was in December and the time between sunrise and sunset was a mere eight hours. Now when it’s closer to 16 hours and the temperature is still in the high thirties I’m far too feeble to join in. Other foreigners are made of sterner stuff, however.
“I’m not doing it this year, but I did do it last year,” said one of the women who’s married to a Göremeli. “This year we’ve just been too busy,” and given that I’ve seen her slaving away in the steamy confines of a restaurant kitchen, she has my every sympathy.
“But,” she went on, “I did enjoy it when I did it. I felt a lot healthier and water seemed like liquid gold. I did it the first time because we were living with my in-laws and they and my husband were fasting. Afterwards, though, I did it because I wanted to.”
In skipped another foreign woman who has made it safely through this most demanding of years for fasting. She too asserted that it had made her feel much healthier, that it had given her a greater appreciation for what she ate. Neither claimed to have found it particularly difficult to stay on the straight and narrow. “The first few days are hard. After that you get used to it,” one of them said, which more or less echoed what a carpet dealer from Mustafapaşa had told me: “For the first three days I get headaches in the evening. It’s not going without water that’s the problem. It’s going without tea when I usually drink so much of it.”
Given the great heat it’s not perhaps surprising that there have been more backsliders here than in previous years. There seems to have been little stigma attached to opting out of fasting, although I’ve met very few women who have had the courage to say no. They have also been readier to admit to the hardship of trying to forego water while working beneath the blazing sun. Several of them have smacked their lips mournfully and admitted how parched and dry their throats felt. The men, however, seemed to think that it would be a sign of weakness to admit to any difficulty. “We’re used to it,” has been their perpetual refrain.
I tried to enter into the spirit of things by going on a diet although I know that that was the coward’s way out. But not all Muslims actually think that non-Muslims should fast, anyway. “She’s not a Muslim so why is she fasting?” was one of the harsher reactions I remember from my December endeavor. I don’t think it was especially typical, but it was certainly a point of view in striking contrast with that of the man in the newsagent’s.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
