Kaveh Akbar on the Threads of Ramazan Fasting

"This year, for the first time in my life, I have fasted for all of Ramazan," writes Kaveh Akbar in a new piece for the Paris Review Daily. "The Quran says during Ramazan you’re supposed to 'eat and drink until the white thread of dawn appears to you distinct from the black thread of night.'" More:

And then fast until sunset—no food, no drink. The black thread/white thread part fascinates me, eating in the predawn morning until it’s light enough outside to tell the white thread from the black.

Nowadays there’s an app called Muslim Pro (a hilarious name) where you enter your location and it tells you exactly what time to stop eating. But I like to imagine a time when someone was sitting outside eating bread and cheese alone in the dark, checking and rechecking their two threads. They’d eat a bit more, yawn a bit, and then, suddenly, rubbing their eyes, they’d catch a gleam of light against the white thread and shout “Stop! Stop!” to their family inside.

That’s probably not how it ever worked.

I suppose I am looking for God, for a feeling of transformative belief. I am hoping that fasting might thin the membrane between me and a feeling of the divine. That it might open a channel between us, a tin-can telephone line. Prayer is a way of speaking to the divine. Meditation is a way of listening for it.  I’m not sure yet which one fasting is for me. Maybe both. But I figure, if I can talk to God, shouldn’t I?

Find it all at the Daily.