"Not even water?" Always the question.
Not judgment—just bafflement.
"But what if you get thirsty?" Thirst, to them, is an emergency. Someone else, usually practical, will chime in: "The body can survive three days without water." A scrap of trivia, lifted from survival documentaries, or maybe a news story about a man lost at sea. Still, they remain unsettled. Several hours—manageable. But waking before dawn to gulp water, to ration thirst like currency—this feels to them like bending the rules.
It is always about the water.
I notice it in the office. People with mugs pressed between their palms, takeaway cups cradled. Their days broken down into sips and refills, meetings punctuated by the tilt of a bottle. The steam curling off morning coffee never questioned. Hydration, not as choice but reflex. It’s how they mark time—the way someone else might glance at a clock. Comforts so automatic they don’t register as comforts.
This is fasting: the quiet subtraction that reveals what’s usually invisible. The ordinary turned sublime by its absence. A month reshaped by what’s missing, yet what is all around.
Fasting exists in all the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—each with its reasons, its rhythms. But in Ramadan, fasting is total. Not just food. Not just drink. Not just the body; impulse; indulgence; excess. Ramadan asks for restraint in the smallest things: a stray thought, an impatient word, the mindless scrolling. It is a month-long undoing of the automatic.
The absence is the point.
Thirst isn’t punishment. It’s a reminder. Of how easy it is to forget need when need is always met. Of gratitude for what fills you, empathy for those who endure lack without choice. The fleeting nature of comfort, how it slips beneath notice until it’s gone.
For me, Ramadan isn’t just abstention. It’s recalibration. A clearing out. A realigning. You step back from the excess. You sit with the emptiness. You realise absence can hold its own kind of fullness.
And then—sunset.
The first sip of water is cold. Impossibly cold. It tastes like relief. Like reprieve. The first bite—a date, fingers sticky with its sweetness—is deliberate. Chewed slowly. Held in the mouth. It’s not about the food. Not really. It’s about the pause. The sitting-with. The collective exhale of those who’ve waited with you. The ordinary made sacred through waiting.
So, when they ask again—because they always do—"Not even water?"
This is the entire point. I know that. But I don’t say it.
I smile. "Not even water."