By Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2006; D01
Ashraf Sarsour was at an obligatory business lunch for a longtime client when he got what he describes as "the look."
Table by table, his co-workers made their way to the buffet. But he remained seated, his stomach rumbling. A waft of fried chicken filled the air. Forks and knives clinked. Waiters filled and refilled water glasses to the brim. And he sat, acutely aware that he'd become an oddity. Patience, he kept telling himself, patience.
Oooh, then he spotted the sweet potato pie, his favorite. Patience.
"Ash, what are you doing? Go eat, man," one colleague urged him.
"Thanks, but I'm fasting."
"Uh, well, here, have a drink."
"It doesn't really work that way."
The exchange last year was like many others Sarsour has had during Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims fast from dawn to sunset every day. His Christian friends know about Lent and his Jewish friends fast on Yom Kippur. But the duration and rigor of Ramadan -- underway this month -- baffle many non-Muslims and make the ritual a curiosity in the working-lunch /coffee break /water cooler office culture.
"From most people, I get the look that says, 'Why are you doing this to yourself?' " says Sarsour, 30, as he drives home to Alexandria from the D.C. office of BearingPoint Inc., where he is a program management consultant. "I get a double look, up and down, because I'm so skinny already."
Then come the questions:
Not even a sip of water? (No.)
Can you chew gum? (No.)
Pop an aspirin? (No.)
Brush your teeth? (Depends whom you ask. Sarsour brushes.)
Basic Training for the SoulThe Koran tells believers: "Fasting is decreed for you as it was decreed for those before you."
"It's that simple," says Imam Mahmoud Abdel-Hady of Dar al-Taqwa mosque in Columbia. "Allah is the only one who has the right to tell us how to worship Him and it is not for us to choose how and when."
The "when" is always the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, which coincides with the time the angel Gabriel revealed the first verses of the Koran to the prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. The "how" is dictated by the Koran, believed to be the literal word of God, and the Hadith, compendiums of how the prophet lived and conducted himself. From these teachings, it's clear that Ramadan is about much more than abstaining from food and drink, says Imam Johari Abdul-Malik of the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church. Rather, it is annual basic training for the soul.
"It's about abstaining from the feeding of one's passions," Adbul-Malik says. "The whole personality is fasting. The mouth is fasting from improper speech. The ears are fasting from hearing speech that is not appropriate. Our eyes are fasting from looking at things that might arouse us even if those things are permissible under normal circumstances."
For married couples, for instance, that means no sex from dawn to sunset.
Teaching the ChildrenSarsour started fasting half-days at age 6, then full days at 9, as did his brother Ahmad, now 27, and his sisters Maisa, 24, and Hana, 21.
He's cheated just once, in his first year of all-day fasting, when he came home from soccer practice, famished. In the basement, he gobbled down a few Keebler Fudge Stripes cookies.
"My mom caught me," Sarsour remembers. "She said: 'You know, God is always watching. You're not doing this for me or for your father. This is between you and God.' "
That's a lesson that comes back to Sarsour every Ramadan and one he hopes to teach his children, Nawal, 3, and Hamed, 1 -- named after Sarsour's mother, now deceased, and his father, respectively.
Sarsour figures his children, as he did, will grow up in a culture that's not Ramadan-friendly. Commerce will not come to a halt during the daylight hours of Ramadan, as it does in some Arab countries. Work will not start late or end early. Life will go on around them, as if the holy month is like any other.
How, he wonders, can he build up the excitement so that his children look forward to Ramadan as many Christian kids do Christmas?
There's Eid al-Fitr, a three-day celebration at the end of Ramadan when children typically get new clothes, pocket change and plenty of sweets. He and his wife, Samaher, 22 , bought their daughter a prayer rug last year because she likes to mimic their movements when they pray.
Sarsour explains his thinking on his drive, a few days before he started fasting. In the background, he catches the word "Islam" on the car radio and cranks up the volume. Commentators are analyzing President Bush's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, replaying his statement that the United States is not waging a war on Islam.
"Ten years ago, I would've never thought that everybody, everywhere would be talking about my religion all the time," says Sarsour, who was born in Virginia in 1976, six years after his father moved there from the West Bank.
He touches a tiny red and gold velour box hanging from his rearview mirror, with a Koranic verse inscribed on its cover, a trinket he bought on a business trip to Egypt.
"You know, of every five people who ask me about Ramadan, one will come back and ask a follow-up question," he says. "I want to have all the answers for them, to be really ready this time."
Educating the WorkplaceIslamic scholars say Ramadan is not designed to be a period of torture, but rather a time of spiritual awakening. That's why, just before dawn, families traditionally gather for a meal called the sohoor , to sustain them through the fast. It's also why people who are feeble, sick, pregnant, nursing or traveling are exempt from fasting. So are women who are menstruating -- though they have to make up the days at a later time (as do the sick and the traveling).
Try explaining that to the boss, especially a male one.
When Saira Sufi was an aide to Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), her supervisor, a close buddy, noticed she'd stopped fasting. The taunting began. You're not a good Muslim, he said. You're taking the easy way out.
"He just kept teasing me about it," recalls Sufi, 27, who is now deputy director of events at the Civil War Preservation Trust. "So I said: 'Okay, if you really want to know, I've got my period.' "
He shook his head. "I can't believe you told me that," Sufi remembers him saying. She chuckles. "But, hey, you can't tell me I'm not a good practicing Muslim and get away with it."
Lina Hashem, a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton's Herndon office, has fessed up to a boss or two in a previous job, though a friend of hers resisted.
"My friend would get so embarrassed that she'd go into a separate office to hide," says Hashem, 25. "She'd shut the door and eat her lunch. She didn't want to explain, but she didn't want anyone to think she was a sellout either."
In the blue-collar world, the challenges multiply in part because there is no office door to shut.
Mounir Moutaouakil, a Moroccan-born Muslim who has been fasting each Ramadan since age 12, was a waiter for seven years, mostly at the Cheesecake Factory and a Mexican restaurant called Carlos O'Kelly's, before graduating from college. Sundown, and the permitted time to end the fast, came inconveniently during the dinner rush. To take a break during that prime moneymaking time would be foolish, he says. So he pushed through even though his bosses granted him the time to eat a proper meal.
But perhaps the biggest challenge, he recalls, was the alcoholic beverages all around him.
"There's a big conflict there," says Moutaouakil, who is now an electrical engineer at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. "You can't just go to a corner and pray when you're around all that alcohol. It's not a proper place."
The Body AdjustsFor Sarsour, the most convenient place during work hours is his office building's stairwell.
It's a quiet nook where he can carry out the noon and afternoon prayers in private. Muslims are required to pray five times a day, including during pre-dawn hours, sunset and evening. During Ramadan, many people are more mindful of their prayers.
Many Muslims also gather at night during Ramadan, usually at a mosque, for the Taraweeh prayer to recite portions of the Koran.
And that makes for a long and exhausting day, Sarsour said.
Sarsour began fasting on Saturday, Sept. 23. But as he tells it, his first day of fasting in the office was more trying, in part because he could not sleep in.
The day started around 5 a.m., when he and Samaher prayed and ate the pre-dawn meal. Just as he was falling back asleep, the alarm rousted him at 7 a.m. and it was off to the office.
In his cubicle, Sarsour sporadically logged onto IslamiCity.com to listen to the Koran as every Muslim should during the holy month. He kept checking his breath, brushed his teeth twice and was embarrassed to hear his stomach growling when he leaned over a co-worker's desk to explain a computer application.
Then came lunchtime. He saw the Subway bags, smelled the sandwiches, and called his wife.
"Can we have Subway for dinner?" he asked her. No, she said.
By 10 a.m., Samaher Sarsour was making eggs and pancakes for the kids. "I'm actually hungriest in the morning," she says. "I was really hungry and I'm thinking: Well, I can eat in another seven hours."
Then she bathed the children, attended to errands and began cooking iftar , the meal served to break the fast.
By 6 p.m., roughly 15 minutes before her husband returned home, she felt drained. The children demanded dinner. She sent her husband to Giant to pick up some dates, a staple at the traditional iftar. Finally the couple sat down to eat in the basement of the yet-to-be-furnished townhouse they purchased about a month ago.
It was 7:20, 19 minutes after sunset. Before them was a spread of dates, rice, chicken, and a bowl of mulokhia -- a soupy, spinachlike dish spooned over rice.
"Honestly, this is tough in the beginning, all of it: getting up so early, staying up so late, keeping up with the kids, working," Ashraf Sarsour says. It gets easier the second week. The body adjusts.
The cellphone rings an Arabic tune. It's his father calling from Lacey Grocery, the convenience store he owns in Falls Church. Hamed Sarsour, 58, wants his son to cover for him while he goes to Taraweeh prayer with friends.
"I'll be right there," Ashraf says.
His wife rushes up to the kitchen to pack leftovers for her father-in-law. With the food in hand, her husband opens the door.
The land line rings.
Everyone ignores it.
"It's got to be a telemarketer," he says. "Anyone who calls at this hour on Ramadan could not possibly be Muslim."