Iftar

Is Ramadan over yet? No, the moon is full which means that we have two more weeks. This is my last week of classes, however, and things should get a lot more relaxed when I no longer have to get up at 7:45AM after getting to bed at one in the morning.

Ramadan is the time of Iftar (I am probably not spelling that right), also known as breakfast although it is eaten around 6PM after the sun goes down. It's a tradition to invite people to dinner, and Sonia (my Muslim housemate) has been going out about every night and when I am lucky she brings me with her.

The traditional Iftar meal starts with a quick appetizer of dates and samosas. Generally stuffed with either cheese or meat, these things are to die for. After that, the people all go off and pray after having their hunger for the most part fought off. When they get back, the women will spread a large plastic sheet on the ground and spread food on it. The names of the foods escape me right now, but for those who are interested please check back. I will get someone to photograph the spread of the next meal and write down the names for me. But generally there is this dish consisting of that spongy Ethiopian bread in a yogurt sauce of some sort, and it rocks. A meat dish and a big platter of rice cooked with potatoes and meat. Everyone is given a spoon and told to dig in. There is usally flat bread that gets passed around when the salta (another dish which is actually kind of gross and in my opinion looks a bit like puke) comes out.

After dinner it's desert time, generally a jello thing (called jelly here, like in Samoa, which was a shock when I bought some "mix-it-yourself" jelly that I made and tried to eat off bread) and some cake type thing. And coffee. Needless to say, I have put on quite a bit of weight!! (The nightly Pilates sort of died out.)

After that there is conversation. We've figured out a way around this by having a friend give up an emergency call at around 7:45 telling us that there is a roach in the bathroom, the toilet is overflowing, genies are talking over the world—whatever is needed to get us the hell out of there before we have to meet someone's grandmother, mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, 2nd cousin and so on. Becky and I were wondering if they do this to each other. The same thing happened to me in Palestine… I mean, could you imagine going to your friends house, having a nice meal, then having them say "Well, let's get in the car, we're going to Grandma's house so that you can meet her?" Keep in mind that this is made worse by the fact that we don't speak the same language.

Iftar is cooked by the women of the house, and they generally eat separately from the men. In many of the dinners that I would be at I wouldn't even see a woman, except for an occasional smiling grandmother who greeted us at the door. When we were introduced to the women, they would come pouring out of the door like a clown car. Becky and I did recently go to an Iftar where we were the guests of the women, and it was a very different experience. It was a special occasion and there were easily 60 women there, and I only saw the men at the beginning of the evening. For me, it was sad to see all the identical black-robed women walk into the room and show such personality after they threw off their scarves.

Anyway, tonight some of our housemates made dinner and we had our own Iftar. Tim and Derrick (a new housemate) were cooking and we girls sent them into the kitchen while we lounged around and watched TV in our Bizarro version of Yemen. It was nice until I was told that I would be the one to wash the dishes.