Tues 31st August 2010
Oh my God I have been a bloody nightmare today.
You might think that after twenty one days I might just have got used to fasting during daylight hours. That I might just have it down to a tee. But I am beginning to see why we are advised to eat three times a day with healthy snacks in between. Because it makes us nicer people.
I woke up in a storming mood and proceeded to tell anyone who would listen just how bad that mood was. My patience with Baran has been hanging by a thread. My patience with myself was devoid of all thread. It was utterly threadless. I don’t know what’s got into me. Aside from the lack of nutrition and deficient salvational cups of tea one normally has in these circumstances, I don’t know what’s got into me.
And it’s been one of those days where I can’t tell if Baran is really being naughty or if he’s just getting a negative vibe from me. Probably a bit of both. For the first time since he entered the terrible twos territory, I have actually worried about what might be making my child so angry. He screamed when he dropped his Cheerios at breakfast, he screamed when I sang him ‘Twinkle Twinkle’, he screamed when I suggested we might go to Playzone and, in the end, he screamed if I even looked at him. And there’s me, the picture of calm and serenity on the outside but I, too, am screaming like a banshee on the inside.
This is where I wonder how the Muslim women do it. How do they cope with fifty seven children clutching to their skirts, at a time when they are gagging for a cuppa? And then suddenly, the communal living I witnessed in Eastern Turkey all seems to make enormous sense. They have each other. Mothers, sisters, aunties, cousins – they all live in startlingly close proximity, which I found incredibly stifling during my visit there, but now I can see what a precious support structure that really is. Not just during Ramazan, but all the time. They not only share cleaning, childcare, shopping and cooking, but also stories, laughter, worries and dreams. They prop each other up. By the time the husbands return home it’s chow time, but only after a day of mutual understanding with the girls. The sisterhood totally rocks.
But here’s the thing. I am doing this alone. I have probably already pointed this out as it seems to be my favorite fact to point out, but I don’t actually get to see my husband very much. He works late nights and sleeps the majority of the day, so my efforts to support him with Ramazan have, at times, been done in solitude. He’s aware I’m doing it and I think that very fact pleases him enormously, but we aren’t actually physically there for each other much at all. And, although most of my friends know I am undertaking this challenge and have been very interested and supportive, they are not going to put themselves through something so seemingly ridiculous now are they? Where is my sisterhood? I want a sisterhood!
It was a shame, then, that I was so exhausted by today’s tantrum-taming antics that I didn’t join the sisterhood of Nairn and attend my usual Zumba class. I just could not find the strength in me to shake my bootie on down. Instead I am happy to say that the tantrum-ridden toddler is tucked up in bed and I am tucked up in Mustafa’s sloppy tracksuit bottoms and jumper. Suddenly everything is as it should be. And it’s 8.21pm. Time to raid the fridge.
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