During my first month at Georgia Tech, I kept looking around as if to shake myself back into reality. Everyone looked different. Different shades, different body types and different styles of clothing. For a girl who spent a good portion of her adolescence in a population overwhelmingly saturated with rich, white, thin women, this was a marked change from what I was used to seeing. And that helped my self esteem immensely. Walking around high school, I felt like I was loud and out of place. At a size 10, I felt like I was caught in between groups; too thick for the skinny kids, and too small for Torrid. Drake rapped about being bad in high school—and as a Muslim girl who wore jeans year-round out of religion and also dealt with body dysmorphia, I could not relate. College was a welcome departure, folding me into a sea of difference in physical form, and indifference to personal choices. Walking around Atlanta gave me a welcome anonymity.
As articles about the quarantine-15 circulate, I’m caught in a dilemma. Going from cityscapes to backwoods isn’t always pretty, especially when it comes to being a minority. At college, indifference to my appearance allows me to move through the world unencumbered. As COVID-19 places me back into a hometown I never felt welcome in, I’ve had to reassess my mental state and check in on the high-school girl who never grew up. One thing that’s made it easier is a plethora of distractions—for one, observing fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
Muslims on the Internet collectively joke about Ramadan—for a whole month, we fast from sunup to sundown in the spirit of empathy. Restricting ourselves to no food or drink, we fast to place ourselves in the places of the poor. One thing to note—it’s not a diet. As Muslims, we joke that we all lose hard earned gains in the gym. We make memes about incredulous Americans, who silently dismiss our religion. We eat fried pakora (onions in a lentil dough) and commiserate about the post-fast bloat. And then we gather, praying and donating money to the poor. Ramadan is spiritually transformative in this way—it allows us to reconnect with our values. It is the great equalizer: no matter where you live or how rich you are, you are fasting with one another in solidarity. Quarantine, an isolating experience for many, is a backdrop that allows me to appreciate the warmth of Ramadan.
It is this stick-to-it-ness that makes me admire the spirit of Ramadan. Although many think that fasting might make you lose weight, it doesn’t work that way for a lot of people, especially women on a month-long hormonal cycle. In fact, most people’s metabolisms slow down a little, and everyone’s sleep cycles get ruined, waking up an hour before dawn to shove as much food as possible down our throats. Fasting is uncomfortable, even more so in Western countries that don’t flip their schedules to accommodate people. But this deliberate discomfort is what makes it meaningful; striving to understand struggles we’ve never experienced allows us to appreciate our bodies all the more.
Not everything is perfect. Even within the Muslim community, there are older women who moan and groan about how their daughters won’t get married after they gain weight. We all clench our fists when we hear those ladies at the mosque, silent as we head to our cars after prayer. But fasting reminds me how food can add to my life, nourishing me and making me feel whole. Food becomes less of an enemy; carbs are a cultural tie that we use to feel close to one another, instead of the culprit of a coveted waistline. So the next time you see an article about how to get killer abs during the quarantine, remember that you are loved. You are fed. Most of all, you are not alone. Life may never return to normal as we know it, but the warmth of our traditions can see us through a taxing time.