From the Fanoos in the Window

My dearest …,

They hung me up tonight, the way they do every year, and I will be here in this window every evening for a month. I like this job. I get to watch the whole house from up here, and tonight I was watching one person in particular: .

A month is a long time, , and I am not going to pretend otherwise. There will be afternoons this month when everyone in this house is tired and a bit short with each other. That is normal and it is not a failure. Being hungry makes people scratchy. The point is not that it is easy. The point is that it is done anyway, together, by everybody at once.

And here is the part I see best from the window. Every single evening, this house opens. Food goes out to neighbours. People come in who would not normally come in. Somebody always gets fed who was not expecting to be. A month that looks from the outside like going without is, from where I hang, the most generous month of the whole year.

Watch for suhoor before it gets light, if you are old enough to be woken. It is the quietest, strangest, best part of the whole thing, and hardly anyone talks about it.

Ramadan Kareem,
from the light in your window —

The Fanoos

The Lantern That Keeps the Month

P.S. — I heard about . Kindness in a hungry month counts double, and I keep a running total.