For Ramadan, Long Days

By NAUREEN S. MALIK

This year’s observance of Ramadan, which begins Monday, coincides with the dog days of summer. While the date is fitting—Ramadan means “hot season” in Arabic—it may test many Muslims like rarely before, as the long summer days push the ritual evening meal past 8 p.m.

Every year, Ramadan begins 11 days earlier than the year before, with the cycle repeating roughly every three decades. Between now and the Eid holiday that marks the end of fasting, daylight hours will stretch 15 hours on average—the longest days seen in 26 years.

Many Muslims have taken pains in recent weeks to prepare themselves for the month of fasting and reflection, during which they must abstain from consuming anything, even water, between dawn and dusk. Some have been steeling themselves with daylong practice fasts.

Others say they will shift their work schedules, plan meals ahead of time, stay out of the heat, shower more frequently and nap in the afternoon.

“It’s going to be hard,” said Malika Mejdoub, a 29-year-old who is training for the Chicago Marathon in October. The Queens resident, who aims to qualify for the 2012 Moroccan Olympic team, is scaling back her daily training regimen from two runs to one.

“I am going to train smart this month. I don’t want to kill myself this month,” she said.

Having to sit by while coworkers snack and lunch nearby isn’t easy, but fasting is not meant to be a hardship, said Shamsi Ali, associate imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. “Very few Muslims realize that fasting is a means to change ourselves, to become better individuals so that you may achieve self-consciousness,” he said, adding: “We realize that we are not just a physical being, we are a spiritual being.”

Still, temptation comes in many forms: coffee, water, cigarettes, the smell of griddled meat wafting from a street vendor’s cart.

“The first two days are the hardest; once you get past them, your system gets used to it,” says Boukari Maiga, manager at a milk plant in Queens. He expects that mornings will be hardest for him, and said he plans to load up on vegetables and protein during the evening meal. He’ll also begin eating again at 3:30 a.m., before sunrise begins the day’s fast.

Workers with flexible schedules say they plan to take advantage of them, and the New York Police Department will allow Muslim officers to shift assignments during Ramadan.

Mohamed Amen, an officer who works the overnight shift that ends at 6:30 a.m., says it will be tough finding time to eat. But the 39-year-old father of two says that the switching shifts would make the fasting period even harder, since he would be working—and working up an appetite—during the warmest periods of the day.

Many Muslims tend to go to sleep later and wake earlier during the month, as they try to cram in meals and extra prayers before sunrise. “I’ll be going in later to work and staying later” to fit in more sleep, said Abdullah Assana, a New York City Department of Education research analyst.

Although fasting-based diets are growing in popularity among some New Yorkers, they might be surprised to learn that many Muslims do not lose weight during Ramadan.

Reduced physical activity and larger-than-average evening meals contribute to weight gain, said Dr. Wahida Karmally, director of nutrition at Columbia University’s Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. After fasting long hours, she said, “you feel like you deserve to eat those high-fat foods and everyone is offering them to you.”

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