Black Sabbath Iftar

September 28

On Tuesday Omar and I went to see the remnants of Black Sabbath (minus Ozzy Osbourne) in Denver. It was a unique experience to break the fast while cruising down the highway, calculating sunset with the dashboard clock and tucking into a styrofoam box of Chinese takeout at the appointed moment. Over the years, Ramadan has become, to me, a wholly Egyptian experience, celebrated with Egyptian foods at big ’azoomas of relatives and friends, capped off by soccer games. Ramadan in Egypt is how I learned to cook without needing to taste the food. Now that we’re back in the US, I can buy chicken stock in cans, already strained and seasoned--no need to go to a fararghi and select a live rooster, throw him in a pot, and season the broth myself, gauging the level of salt and onion by sight and smell alone in the last hours of fasting. In the west it seems there’s no need to cook by sense--everything is already prepared and measured out. It’s the perfect place for a fasting cook. There’s some small uneasy irony there that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Right. Here’s how other people are spending the holy month:

Ali Eteraz writes a series of Ramadan Reconciliations that are definitely worth reading, especially if you’ve kept up with his other work over the years.

Muse chronicles her first Ramadan in Cairo.

As the full moon makes its appearance, Aziz of City of Brass reflects on the halfway mark of the month.