Today is my first day fasting for this year's month of Ramadan. The first fast was technically yesterday, but my body was bleeding, and I was exempt.
It's strange doing this again. The last time I fasted was in New York, so it was probably 2019, and I have done maybe a day or two since then when I visited my family in California. My body follows learned somatic responses. This morning, I woke up before dawn to eat. I remembered the words of the intention to fast in Arabic as if my lips were waiting to say it. I remembered how to bend at the knees, I remembered how to wash the insides of my nostrils and ears, I remembered how to ask for blessings, I remembered how to turn my head, first to the right to greet one angel, then to the left to greet the second angel. My muscles moved; I spoke without knowing I was speaking.
It's 2:00pm as I write this. The sun will set around 7:00pm today and I will break my fast. Already, my body feels light, radiant, heady. I've been reading texts about Sufism in Islam, how to deny the material, how to purify the heart, how the pursuit of knowledge is the pursuit of God, how greed is a curse.
I'm angry all the time these days. Angry at injustice, at corruption, at the complete disregard for human life. I've felt, lately, that my mind has not been clear, and I want it to be as sharp as it possibly can, to cut away all the lies we tell ourselves, that it's okay for some people to die, that it's okay to be silent, that it's okay to turn your face away from what's happening. I needed to strengthen myself.
In Islam, all books are holy, not just the Qur'an, or the Bible, or the Torah. Every book and written word deserves respect. The first word revealed to the Prophet was "read", and though he was unlettered, he still carried the book.
Another somatic response to ritual: we are taught that if our feet touch a book, you kiss the book and then touch it to your forehead–an act of purification. Even now I will never leave a book where I will step on it by accident. As a kid, when I began to read like I was possessed, checking out dozens of books from the library at a time, the floor of my room would be covered in them. My mom would come in to my sister's and my room after we'd gone to bed, and I could hear her making her way across the floor, bending down to kiss every book her feet touched, and then she would come to my sister and me.
In the dark, she said prayers of protection over us. She would blow down on herself to give herself a portion of the protection, and then blow the prayers to us. First my sister, then to me. And she would kiss us, like we were books ourselves, lying there in the dark.