Milly

Ramadan is the holy month in the Muslim calendar when the Quran (word of God for Muslims) was completed after having been revealed over a period of 23 years to the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh)

So what is Ramadan like? Well, its a fun-filled time when families who rarely have time for each other because of work and school commitments are somewhat forced to wake up in the early hours of the morning, when they would be usually sleeping and sit together and eat a meal prepared by everyone. At first it seems so hard to break out of your sleep to eat, which is the last thing you feel like doing at that time in the morning, but bearing in mind that we'll be starving all day is motivation enough to get my sleepy head out of bed. I can usually smell the eggs frying as mum is downstairs preparing the food, i lug myself downstairs, groggy eyed and see a warm light coming from the kitchen/breakfast room while the rest of the house is dark. My dad is calling my brother to get his lazy chops out of bed to make the tea while i make a start on the toast. The first five mins are terrible, but once you're out of the sleepy phase, its really nice...my brother who i would never chat to, cos he runs out of the house for school or is busy listening to his iPod or chatting on his phone, is actually sitting idly and ready to have a conversation for once. It really does make time in the day for each other where there previously wasn't any time..Sahoor, the breakfast meal lasts about a half hour before its time to pray and our handy Apple Mac widget pops up at dawn and we all listen to the call of prayer in Arabic at the right time, technology ay!

So we then all crawl back into bed after praying together and after a couple of hours its time to get back up to go to work, school, college etc...i have to say, that is really hard, settling back in to deep sleep on a heavy stomach and then to be forced out of bed is a killer, but i always remember that every suffering erases my sins on the day of judgement, so it all good!

Anyway, the morning is pretty easy at work, but then by the afternoon the stomach starts to rumble and you feel pretty thirsty, but a lot of the time is spent reciting prayer and remembering God's power and blessings even when you are doing your everyday tasks like filing away papers, preparing for a meeting, i'm silently reciting or remembering God as my hands move to do the things they always do.

Praying throughout the day, at least three times at work, and twice at home helps to maintain the spirituality through the day. By dusk, you feel like you could eat a buffalo! so when you fish out that sandwich bag from your backpack and empty out that date, it looks like the most tastiest thing on earth. So why dates? Well, it was the staple diet of the Arabs in the day of our Prophet (pbuh) and so we enjoy emulating those who we admire. Ok enough mushy stuff...we listen to the call to prayer on our mobiles, radios, tvs etc depending on where we are and then 'BAM', in goes the date and it is like a moment of utter relief and thankfulness to God for having given us so much food on this Earth to enjoy which we would otherwise take for granted!

30 days of this process will humble anyone to a point of gratitude and appreciation for food and family.

(pbuh) = peace and blessings be upon him