Groundhog Day

For the past week or so, we’ve been looking forward to the end of Ramadan. On the one hand it’s a religious holiday, and on the other hand it’s an excuse for many Moroccans to party late into the night, and put off work (including a mirror frame that we ordered, which is three weeks behind schedule). And while the call to prayer usually sounds six time a day (a convenience to give busy Muslins a choice of five out of six prayers to attend) Ramadan brings with it several additional calls, if not prayers. Each muezzin (see post Muezzin-Imobilier) acts as a sort of neighborhood alarm clock. Since the schedule of Ramadan is built around the fast during daylight, the muezzin wakes up the neighborhood with a call at 3:30AM to let people know that it’s time to get up and eat breakfast. An hour later, anticipating that some people would hit the proverbial snooze button, he calls again, as if to say, if you hurry, you’ve still got 30 minutes to scarf down a quick breakfast. At 5 o’clock, he begins the usual course of prayers (which follow at roughly12:30, 2:00, 4:30, 7:15, and 8:30, though they all change times slightly throughout the year as the days wax and wane.) During Ramadan he throws in an extra call at 3:30PM, for reasons currently unknown to us. Over the past month, the days continue to shorten and so the all-important call that the sun had fallen, which we’ve taken to calling the “Call to Table” has moved from about 6:30PM to just past six o’clock. This call is accompanied by what sound like air raid sirens: it is not to be missed.

We started asking about the exact end of Ramadan, but we got some vague answers. After some pressing, we learned that Ramadan is much like Groundhog Day in reverse: if winter can’t end if the groundhog sees his shadow, Ramadan can’t end until the imam verifies the new moon with his naked eye. Cloud cover or a weak prescription can tack a day or two to the fast.

This year, Ramadan was meant to end on Sunday, but it ended on Monday instead. Given that productivity had already slowed to a crawl, for the last day, it pulled up a footstool and sat down, splaying its feet in the street. Immediately after Ramadan is a two-day national holiday which, with families gathering to eat for two days, is much like an American Thanksgiving. I ventured out into the souks the first day and found the city full of men dressed in their crispest white djellabas. Makeshift tables were set up, and men drank coffee and smoked cigarettes in full view, happy that the fast was over. We had forgotten the extent to which Moroccans smoke, and the end of Ramadan brought a veil of tobacco smoke back to the medina.

With a two-day holiday falling on a Tuesday and Wednesday, and with the Friday holy day seldom producing more than a few hours of work, it became clear that the best plan was to throw in the towel on Thursday and take the week off. As for that promised mirror frame, the artisan first complained that his subcontractor was slow during Ramandan, then he told us he’d start as soon as Ramadan ended, but today he complained that the man had taken the week off, and would start in on Monday.

Still, with Groundhog Day, the wrong weather points to another six weeks of winter. Although we did meet a shopkeeper today who proudly told us he was doing an extra week of Ramadan fast for good measure, we’re hopeful that with fewer prayers and more activity, the days ahead will bring a return to what we’ve taken to calling normal.