An American Life in Istanbul

Yesterday marked the first day of Ramadan. I won’t go into extreme detail about what it is, so if you are interested you can read Wikipedia’s Ramadan Page.   Simply put, Ramadan is an Islamic religious observance. It takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar (it’s a lunar calendar, so it is different than ours). Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset for the entire month! That includes no water as well. Furthermore, you are supposed to observe the Koran more closely during this time period and in general be pure of thought. This includes no smoking and drinking.

Of course each person observes this in a different way. Alper has quit smoking during the day light hours (I think), many people are fasting and Ahmet has recently started smoking cigars in the company. To kick off the first day of fasting, Ahmet, Kenan and I went out for dinner. Unfortunately the restaurant we usually go to is closed during Ramadan so we had to trek a bit, but it was no problem. We were able to get there and start eating before sunset. We of course drank Raki, and to top it off, Kenan smoked cigarettes and Ahmet a cigar.

Since yesterday was my first day experiencing Ramadan, I assumed most of the Muslims here do not observe it. When I went downstairs for lunch today, I was surprised to find the lunch room nearly empty. Most of the tables had been moved and only a few chairs were out. I am often late for lunch, so I checked my watch. I was on time. Only 4 or 5 people from my company were eating of the 30 or so that are typically there. The lunch was unusual as well. It was lots of small breakfast things - cheese, bread, egg, olives, tomatoes, small sausages. It was actually excellent (I really love eating olives here). For a change, I stuffed myself. It felt a little awkward eating in front of our kitchen staff, and having them bring us tea, when they cannot eat or drink until after sunset tonight.

The positive impact of Ramadan on my life is that for some reason all employees get a box of random food stuff from the company (since people are not eating lunch I guess). I assume it’s Ramadan food, so I don’t know what to do with any of it, but there is a lot of olive oil and olives which I am excited about. The second thing is that since there is no lunch break, and no tea breaks (remember they can’t drink either), work ends at 5pm instead of 6pm. Thus my current predicament, everyone is gone and it’s too early for me to head to the city. So what should I do with my time?

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