by Zoë Pollock
Rollo Romig converted to Islam after marrying his wife. In an essay about his first time fasting for Ramadan, he beautifully conveys the rituals, the hardship, and the humor of giving up food and water for 30 days. He posits that fasting might have "something to do with God’s very unknowability":
Wherever they are, Muslims direct their prayers toward the Kaaba, the black cube at the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which Muslims also circumambulate when they make their major pilgrimage. Inside, the Kaaba is empty. When the fast empties you out during Ramadan, no matter how well you adjust to the deprivation, you never stop feeling the tug of hunger. That tug is a reminder—a reminder, perhaps, of that void inside the Kaaba, and the silent mystery of the divine. On Day Twenty-seven, I happened upon a verse in the Koran about a mirage in the desert: “The thirsty man takes it to be water until he comes to it and finds it to be nothing, and where he thought it to be, there he finds God.”
The Dish 