Ramadan

My mother forgets to feed her animals because it's only fair. She rushes to them when she hears hoarse roosters crowing and billy goats butting over a last straw. This month the moon becomes a princess. The stars fan her, Jupiter pours cups of wine, Mars sings melancholy mawals. Bearded men holding prayer beads and yellow booklets stare at her and point aching fingers at her waist. In our house we break a fast with dates from Huun and glasses of buttermilk. Then on to bowls of lamb soup flavored with mint, trays of stuffed grape leaves, spiced fava beans drenched in olive oil and lemon juice. And that is only the beginning. The spirits of Johnny Walker and gin hide in the trunks of white Peugeots. In the nightclubs of my city, waiters serve only non-alcoholic beer and belly dancers cover themselves. Father of sixteen children, our neighbor visits bringing two kilos of baklava. He washes them down with a dozen demitasses of sweet sage tea. Before dawn he runs to one of his two wives, both named Salma, and loves her hurriedly, his hands barely touching a breast.