Lighting A Fire

So this morn­ing, Jimmy told me about Fast For A Day, an event that the Mus­lim Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion was putting on. To raise aware­ness about Ramadan, the MSA invited peo­ple to fast for a sin­gle day, not eat­ing or drink­ing between sun­rise and sun­set. We met up at the Davis Senior Cen­ter and there were some speak­ers telling us about Ramadan, and a free din­ner after sun­set.

For those of you who don’t know, Ramadan is a lunar month of the Ara­bic cal­en­dar, and it lit­er­ally means, “some­thing that sets some­thing else on fire.” Dur­ing this month, Mus­lims fast from sun­rise to sun­set, and nei­ther eat or drink. Although the focus is on the fast­ing of the stom­ach, I learned today that it’s actu­ally a “whole body fast,” and that they are to show restraint in all aspects. “Set­ting some­thing else on fire” is metaphor­i­cal both in the sense that in the tra­di­tion­ally warm cli­mate of Mus­lims, every­thing felt on fire when in the deprived state of fast­ing, and on a deeper level, the faster set you spir­i­tu­ally on fire. (In a good way.)

The imam told us an inter­est­ing fable, so I’ll share it with you all now…

“There once was a wealthy mer­chant with four wives. He loved all four of them, and each wife had a spe­cial qual­ity. He loved his fourth wife the most and treated her extremely well, lav­ish­ing her with gifts and get­ting her every­thing she ever wanted. His third wife was the most beau­ti­ful, and although he did not love her as much as the fourth wife, he was very proud of her and showed her off to all his friends. His sec­ond wife, he did not love as much as his third or fourth, but she was his con­fi­dante. He told her all his secrets, and she always sup­ported him and advised him. And then there was his first wife. She was thin and unkempt because he neglected her and didn’t feed her enough, but she loved him the most of all his wifes, was with him through thick and thin, and took care of his chil­dren and his finances.

One day, the mer­chant became ill, and the doc­tors told him he did not have long to live. As he lay on his deathbed, the mer­chant called his four wives to him. First, he turned to his fourth wife and asked her, ‘I’ve always loved you and pro­vided every­thing for you. Would you do me one thing now and share my grave with me?’ She replied, ‘No way!’ and ran out on him. Feel­ing hor­ri­bly betrayed, he turned to his third wife and asked her for the same thing. She replied, ‘As soon as you die, I’m going to remarry.’ Even more hurt, he turned to his sec­ond wife and asked her for the same thing. She replied, ‘I like you, and I’ll bring your body to the gravesite, but I’m not going into it with you.’ And then before he even had a chance to ask his first wife, she told him, ‘I’ll do it. Even if you neglect me, I’ll always be there for you.’ ’”

The moral is that each of us has these “four wives.” The fourth wife is our body, whose desires we feed with­out ques­tion, but that is the first thing we lose when we die. The third wife is our pos­ses­sions, which get inher­ited by oth­ers when we die; thus the “remar­riage.” The sec­ond wife is our fam­ily and close friends, who love us and will be at our funeral, but they will go on with their lives after. And the first wife is our soul, which will be ours forever.

Thoughts on the fable? Over­all, I thought the event was very enjoy­able. Learned a bit, and got a nice (free!) meal. You can’t beat that. Oh, and just as a dis­claimer: every­thing I knew up until this point about Islam, I learned from Sleeper Cell, so please excuse any errors on my part… my memory’s not what it used to be.

Tags: Family, Friends