The light afternoon breeze gently caresses my face. The gentle caressing of a 3000W hair blower with the turbo boost button pressed deep down. Oh yes. The toughly enjoyable 42 degrees Celsius and relentless sunshine weather typical for the Riyadh early spring has finally come and I already feel like jumping into a pool full of moisturizer.

But my skin dry-blown to the level of potato chip crispiness is not my biggest current problem.

My head keeps spinning. It is’n the crazy wild one you get after 4 beers and 5 shots, but rather an extremely lazy and slow-paced spin, close to that of a a deformed vinyl, gently laid down on a turntable set at 33 RPM. I can’t focus on the excel sheets, my thinking is slow, and skewed. My body feels weak.

I guess my Saudi client was right when he said that the first day of Ramadan is always the harshest one. This got even worse as the previous day I went to a home-party back in Dubai and had quite few drinks. But I said to myself that just one day, just one day has to be manageable. I want to try it out, just for the sake of the experience. One day of fasting exercise from dawn (indicated by the Fajr prayer which was today in Riyadh at ~3:35 AM) until sunset (the Maghrib prayer, ~6:35 PM). And I went for an easier, almost childish version anyway – my last meal today was light breakfast at the airport at 6 AM Riyadh time, plus I managed to catch some sleep on the plane so it’s not even going to be the full 16 hour long ultra-marathon. But I want to try out how it feels nevertheless. How does it feel not to put a piece of food, a drop of water inside of my mouth.

Oh, and also make sure that the excel formulas and issue trees don’t blur too much into each other.

The working morale at the client’s company is looser than usual. During Ramadan, the starting time in most offices changes. Saudi hours shift from the usual 7 AM – 3 PM to 9:30 AM to 3:30 PM. Different employees seem to have quite different attitudes towards working during the holy month. Some are working as usual and I couldn’t see any difference from any normal day – and without any sarcasm, I mean that they really produce outputs, go to meetings, discuss whatever they need to discuss and solve issues. For others, the Ramadan seems to resemble 29 or 30 days of 6-hour long working days, loosely consisting of:

• 2 hours of on-the-job-sleeping
• 2 hours of colleague-talking
• 1 hour of hardcore Youtube-watching
• 1 hour of intensive Whats-Apping
• Occasional bits and pieces of screen-saver watching in between

But I don’t mind. It’s 3 PM and I decide to return back to the hotel to finish the job. It’s impossible to set-up any meetings after lunch noon anyway and even though we work in perfectly air-conditioned offices, in this weather I find it more comfortable to work in a t-shirt rather than in a suit.

I arrive at my hotel room, sit down at my table, and look in front of me. A bottle of water that is looking back at me. The voice of my latent dizziness rings quite clearly inside of my head: “Come on you prick, you can hold on for few more hours, right?”

I mumble an incomprehensible answer to myself, throw the bottle of water to the ground, and try to regain my sanity. Back to excel it is. The desire to gulp down a bit of water is still there, but the slowly falling sun keeps me from jumping into the sea of pleasure. The destination is clear – the Maghrib prayer which signals breaking of the fast.

Two hours left. The excel starts vigorously winking at me. I decide to ignore it and refocus.

One hour left. The tiny little Windows logo in the bottom left part of the screen starts a hula dance. I watch it for few seconds, but then decide to ignore it. Refocus.

Thirty minutes left. The sun is starting to touch the rim of the tallest buildings and it feels surprisingly good. My eyes check out the Iftar menu of my hotel (the festive dinner after the long long day) and I find out that it has already started.

But no, not yet. Not until 6:36 PM.

Few more minutes…

Few more seconds…

Bang. A strong voice from the nearby mosque breaks my hallucinations. Although I perceive myself as respectfully, yet completely irreligious, the strong “Allah akhbar” of the muezzin feels soothing.

I have done it.

I put on a clean shirt and go to the ground floor to the buffet. A sight of few groups of Saudi men, two-three families, some children, and myriads of flavors hits my eyes. I am not sure how to explain it but it truly feels like the flavors are hitting my eyes. I walk around the buffet, take a nice selection of salads, lamb, rice, pistachio, hummus, and sweets, sit down, and start to slowly eat my first ever Iftar menu. The food is almost as amazing as the surroundings.

The kids, laughing, running around, playing games.

The families, talking to each other, discussing most probably everything from how to prepare the best possible biryani to the latest neighbor gossips or family news.

The TV, showing an anti-terrorism ad with a group of smiling people, singing and praying in front of a poor guy in a dirty shirt, stringed with few packs of C4 on his chest, constantly running away from them, with a scared expression in his eyes. The ad has English subtitles so I can understand the lyrics containing both classical expressions quite similar to the hard-core Christian rock songs one can occasionally enjoy in Europe (“Worship your God with love” “Be tender in your faith, tender not harsh”), as well as some true pearls of lyrical creativity that get stuck in your head until the end of your days (“Let’s bomb violence with mercy”, “Let’s bomb hatred with love”). The scenery has 3D flowers blooming occasionally from different parts of the screen, showering my senses with buckets full of colors, understanding, and love.

Peacefully delightful.

After an hour and three refills I decide to roll my body towards my room. The elevator produces a soft squeaking sound when I enter it. It seems to move slightly slower than usual, but I manage to persuade myself that it is just my imagination and not the ~15kg of food I have just devoured.

Going immediately to sleep would be heresy to my long-lasting friendship with my own body so I spend next few hours of the evening reading on music theory, watching Youtube, talking to friends, and planning a weekend getaway trip to Beirut.

I feel actually quite satisfied and catch myself thinking of repeating this, when a message from my manager shows up on my phone:

“Hey buddy, sorry for not being able to join you today for the Iftar. What about going for a Pakistani Iftar the day after tomorrow?”

My stomach produces a heavy sigh as my fingers reply a short “With pleasure!”