My cousin knocks and enters without waiting for me to open the door,
She comes in holding a plate of Msakhan, sometime of stuffed zucchini,
And my mom receives her and hurries up to give her something in return-
A Ramadan trade-off.
The mouazzen starts to pray 15 minutes before the official break of the fast,
And if you fast, you know that these are the longest 15 minutes ever.
Minutes before Iftar, we prepare the plates and the cutlery,
Heat the soup, put a plate of dates that no one touches for some reason.
We pour the cool water, cut the bread,
and wait.
my cousins spend these last minutes playing football in the front yard of my grandparents house,
and my dad never waits, he always pulls up into the driveway just in time to turn on the quran channel and gulp a cold glass of water.
My mom also never waits, as she always finds something to do!
as for myself, I sneak into the 2nd-floor balcony to observe the descending calm:
No one walks the streets,
no tires hitting the asphalt,
even the hoopoe in the poplar trees are gone.
That exact moment when my dad calls for me to join the iftar,
I glimpse the face of God reflected in the clouds,
Right there, but no one is looking.
AICHA BINT YUSIF 