The month of Ramadan has come to an end, like everything does. I fasted for 30 days: without food or water, from sunrise to sunset. The fasts this year were 18 hours, and to many that seemed a colossal number. I must admit, unlike last year, I did not find this Ramadan physically challenging. Admittedly, this year, I was committed to nothing but the fast itself. The previous year, I was working unfathomable hours, functioning on minimal sleep, with my every nerve and sinew invested in deadlines. The restriction on food and water, coupled with the 2hour journey to work both ways left me pretty empty.
This year, though the physical challenge wasn't there, the emotional one was. Last year, the most important thing to me was meeting deadlines. If so and so didn't get their report by x time, the world would end. I was sure of it. If I didn't edit this last piece, or find twelve more images, the entire system would cease to function and I would be solely responsible. Such deep-rooted arrogance and self-involvement meant that I had little time to comprehend anything else - including my fast.
As Ramadan approached this year, I was stripped of my bravado. No longer employed, I had nothing to hide behind or bury my head under. Worse, still, I would now have to confront who I had just spent weeks running from - God. He had taken something, someone, who I had begged Him not to. Someone who I was sure wasn't ready to go. So I had begged. I don't do that very often. My sarcasm and casual spirituality have allowed me to go through life thus far without having to grovel. Aside from this occasion, I can only remember one other. If anything, that should evoke gratitude in me. That I have, by the grace of God, never needed to grovel for much. And yet I am irked…
The first time I actually spoke to God, I must have been around 10. It went something like:
"I know I'm supposed to believe that you exist but I don't think I do. I don't want to go to hell, though. But I don't want to believe in you just because I have to. That's not really believing, is it? I'd just be lying, and you would know because you're God."
I was a smart kid, with a big mouth. I wanted to reach my own conclusions about everything - even God. I would listen quietly to the tirade of 'God-talk' from relatives and family friends. Their declarations on what we "had to believe" and "had to do" as Muslims drove me insane. God did not mean love. God did not mean safety, or comfort. God just meant punishment and hellfire, it seemed. But not my grandmother's God. When she would lift her hands in prayer, her face lit up. It was like she was up there somewhere, sitting by God, immersed in conversation. I would watch her with my breath held - transfixed on this God of hers.
When she fell ill, I tried hard to find Him - this God of hers. She led me, very gently, to Him. Her faith was unwavering. A foreign, vicious disease was invading her very being and yet she remained steadfast. And even under the burden of cancer and that terrible greyness that comes with chemo, her face would still light up when she prayed. One day, I came into her room as she was praying, and cupped my hands around hers as she prayed. Her warmth, her smell, her soft hands - they convinced me her God was real. She was given to me, and I to her. And all that love in my heart for her, well, that had to come from somewhere.
When she died, that same love almost suffocated me. I wanted her back - her smell, her hands, her face. It was too soon. I still needed her. Almost 10 years later, these sentiments came rushing back when someone I thought was too young to go died. She left behind a besotted 3 year old, and a newborn daughter she never had the chance to hold. That little girl will grow up without any recollections of her mother's smell, her hands, her face, but she will grow up with that suffocating love - a void of suffocating love for the mother she never had. I wonder now how her first conversation with God will go...
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