By Asif Khan, TwoCircles.net
“It was the same time of the year when I started fasting,” Adnan remembers his childhood in Jeddah, “only it was a lot hotter there.” He started fasting when he was 7 years old, going on to fast for the entire month when he was around 12. The heat used to be oppressive, but that never stopped him from playing football with his classmates, even while fasting.
Adnan, who works in Jeddah for a multi-national is home for the Ramadan break, recalls “there were different ways in which children used to fast in our family.” The most popular was “ek daadh ka roza”, or chewing from one side of the mouth. Another way was to fast for half a day.
Once he accidentally drank water just a little while before it would have been time for Iftar. “I actually thought I would be struck by lightning or the skies would part or something like that,” he remembers with a smile. Nothing like that happened, and his elders reassured him that nothing like that would.