 |
| Rejuvenation: Familiar colours take on a new beauty when they herald an end to the days fasting. |
I was sitting in the middle of the floor of the studio, surrounded by pieces of the broken bed. It was already past midnight and we had to be up at 4AM again to eat breakfast and then go to work. We were both exhausted and the prospect of another gruelling day of fasting with the added worry of not having a bed to sleep on afterward was utterly demoralising.
Things had been going relatively well, but two and a half weeks of early mornings and full time work had begun to exhaust us. One could liken this to the Tour de France: a sprint finish will win a stage on one particular day, but the yellow jersey is worn by the rider who maintains peak performance over many weeks. True champions of the race are lauded not for their dazzling one-off performances, but rather how they doggedly overcome minor setbacks and unexpected events. Likewise with Ramadan: pushing your limits with one day of fasting is a test, but maintaining this for weeks on end is a real trial - the probability that life will throw yet some other unpredicted circumstance in your path, on top of what you are already dealing with, becomes highly elevated.
In facing this extended challenge, sleep becomes vitally important. No matter how tough the previous day had been, I discovered that after a good night's sleep, even impossibilities can be approached from a different aspect. But about two and a half weeks into my first Ramadan adventure, disaster threatened to deprive us even of this most sacred of sanctuaries.
As I explained, Hebbat and I had been living for over a month in a total of 16 square meters. In conforming to these spatial requirements and maintaining the urban camping metaphor, we both slept in sleeping bags on the same fold-out double bed. When in bed mode, this furnishing occupied almost the entire floor space of the studio. At a pinch we could sleep a third person between the foot of the bed and the kitchen sink, but it meant leaping over each other if we needed to go to the toilet during the night. Because room was so tight, we had worked out procedures and systems to make the space comfortable, but these were systems running on a razor's edge. Any peturbance to their delicate balance could prove catastrophic.
So perhaps inevitably, after weeks of pushing this confined living arrangement with the added complication of fasting, disaster finally struck. Getting out of bed to grab one last drink for the night Hebbat leaned at an odd angle. We heard a creaking, then a cracking and then suddenly we were both on the floor. The bed had completely collapsed. Still half asleep, I shook my head in an effort to orientate myself. After the initial shock of the fall began to subside, a dull sense of panic crept into my stomach. The bed was broken. The frame and mattress were jutting out at odd angles but still taking up most of floor of the studio. We extricated ourselves from the wreckage into the tiny remaining corner of free space and turned around to contemplate the terrifying scene laying before us.
How were we going to sleep? If we couldn't sleep, how were we going to survive tomorrow? With no sleep, attempting a day of fasting seemed ludicrous, impossible and dangerous. We were already at our wits end. Living day to day in Paris can be stressful enough without worrying about fasting for Ramadan. But adding a sleepless night and the prospect of uninhabitable living space due to the sprawling, crawling wreckage of a broken bed... that was asking too much.
With defeat in my mind, and utter disappointment in my eyes I looked toward Hebbat.
