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My brother's Ramadan antics

I don't know how you did it.

Regardless of all the warnings, you'd sleep late every night. Before dawn, Mom would be in and out of your room a dozen times, shaking you, calling your name, announcing how many minutes were left.

Sometimes you didn't get up. But, usually, you'd manage to stumble out of bed and make it downstairs in a daze, squinting in the bright lights, glasses placed on your face haphazardly.

“Pass me a jug of water!” you'd yell. “How many minutes are left?”

Usually, they'd be less than five.

We'd be getting those last gulps of water, looking at the wall clock above the dining room table, and you'd just be starting. You'd grab whatever was on the table and ingest it at an alarming speed—ensuring indigestion later, but desperate times call for desperate measures!

Mom would have a pitcher of water ready for you, daily—was that a wry smile that she hid from her firstborn?—and we'd laugh out loud watching you glug, glug, glug, water spilling down your cheeks. I think you must have enjoyed the audience.

And after every clock in the house had declared that the time was indeed over—you'd check each one for a chance at an extra minute to swallow something—you'd collapse on the couch with the rest of us. Then followed those hysterical moments of laughter and sibling camaraderie that, somehow, only happened after suhoor in Ramadan.

As for what you used to do on Eid... don't get me started.

(June 2018)

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