Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. It is halfway through the month of Ramadan, and this week I have been chatting to fasting family, friends and colleagues across the diaspora about what people don’t know about the Muslim holy month, and what questions we are constantly asked (yes, not even water).

But first, the weekly roundup.

Weekly roundup

Dirtiest air in the world | Chad has been named the world’s most polluted country, with toxic particle levels more than 18 times higher than guideline limits in 2024. Almost every country on Earth has dirtier air than doctors recommend breathing, a report has found.

Mass grave unearthed near Khartoum | More than 500 people may have been tortured and buried in a secret mass grave in Sudan, according to evidence seen by the Guardian. The site, near a base that previously belonged to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, is the largest makeshift burial ground found during the civil war.

Brazil fights for African rebel’s skull | An Islamic group in Bahia state is calling on Harvard University in the US to repatriate the skull of a man who is believed to have led the Malê revolt, an uprising by hundreds of mostly enslaved African Muslims in 1835.

SVG buys island sacred to Garifuna | The Garifuna community is celebrating a historic victory after St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) announced the purchase of Baliceaux, an uninhabited privately owned island where thousands of their ancestors died from disease and starvation under British colonial rule.

Monarch hails king of reggae | King Charles has paid tribute to the king of reggae as part of annual Commonwealth Day celebrations. In a broadcast released on Monday, the monarch shared his favourite songs and spoke fondly about meeting “the great man himself”, Bob Marley, who would have turned 80 this year.

In depth: A month of faith and fasting

In the Islamic calendar, Ramadan is usually observed with a month of fasting, prayer and togetherness, ushered in by the sighting of the new crescent moon. Though there are millions of Muslims across the global Black diaspora, there is a commonality of cuisine, habit and ritual between countries that don’t even share borders.

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Time zones rule

Where you are in the world, has a massive impact on how difficult fasting is. The fast is from dawn till dusk, and the duration of that day varies wildly between one time zone and the next – making the fast longer or shorter depending on where you are. The sweet spot is as close to the equator as possible, where the sun sets at a stable 6-7pm all year. But there is another variable – Ramadan is determined on the lunar calendar, which means the month creeps backwards on the Gregorian calendar by a few days each year.

For those living in the northern hemisphere, the outcome is that Ramadan can either fall at the height of summer or the dead of winter – resulting in a fast that is either very short or extremely long. This year, its fallen in a fairly reasonable season. The longest fasting day is 16 and a half hours (Greenland), and the shortest is about 13 (Brazil). I fasted a couple of Ramadans in the UK that coincided with summer solstice and, let me tell you, little makes you dig deeper into your spiritual reserves like abstaining during the peak of the fleeting and precious British summer.

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Diverse rites, cuisines and rituals

The Black Muslim population is vast, far bigger than many people realise, which I suspect is down to how underrepresented Black Muslims are in media and popular culture. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 300 million Muslims, with the rest of the Black Muslim population dispersed across the diaspora, either born into the religion or converted. In the United States, half of Black Muslims are converts. The rituals of fasting therefore take on a syncretic quality, merging different cultures.

Across north Africa and the Middle East, for example, variations of a certain type of broth or lentil soup are a frequent mainstay of the sunset meal. Farther south, from the far east of Sudan to the far west in Nigeria, doughy dishes made of cornmeal and wheat flour such as aseeda, ugali and ogi are more popular. But throughout there is one food that remains constant: dates. A quick hit of flavour and sugar, a small portion is a near-ubiquitous first morsel across the world.

There are also certain special guests: drinks and dishes that only make an appearance in Ramadan. Vimto, for some reason I’m not quite sure of and probably warrants further investigation, is so hugely popular in some countries that it has its own unique Arabic branding and advertising campaign during Ramadan. And I’m not talking the fizzy contemporary kind in a can, but the full on treacly original in a glass bottle. It was a shock to me to learn that Vimto was not, in fact, an Arabic drink, but one originally created in Manchester.

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Fasting is not just from food and drink

The purpose of fasting is, like most similar practices in other religions, to foster spirituality and a sort of fraternity with those less fortunate. And so everything, if one is lucky to live in a country that observes Ramadan en masse, slows down. A fast properly observed is one free of gossip, smoking, sex, all erotic thoughts, swearing, angry outbursts and general loss of control – all things easier to avoid if there are allowances made by wider society, whether that be reduced working hours or an understanding that the timing of socialising and appointments will have to be modified. To fast in a non-majority Muslim country, in my experience, is to withdraw into a version of social hermitage and, again if one is lucky, to pull closer to family and friends on the same schedule.

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Every year, Ramadan is a surprise

Ramadan observed in exile can be a profoundly isolating and even melancholy experience. It is when family and friends spread across the world, wrenched from their parents’ dining tables, feel the most alienated, and make more of an effort to at least virtually connect. Group breakfasts, shared food prep and communal evening prayer are the norm when one is embedded in a community, so it can feel really hard in the absence of those things. I have broken fast in some pretty bleak places – the supermarket sandwich on a park bench before dashing back to work sticks in my mind as a particular lowlight.

But there is something in that enforced isolation and abstention every year that somehow always pays off. The first part of the month is about sharp adjustment and withdrawal. And boredom, so much boredom. But then you realise how much noise food and drink and snacking and smoking and vaping brings into your day, and how little you need all that you are consuming. The result is a reset of one’s relationship with food and a stillness that once it hits (for me around the second week of the month) feels crystalline.

The isolation of the experience then takes on a kind of enveloping property, rather than a marginalising one. And so even as Ramadan brings Muslims across the diaspora together inside the home and, as often happens, on the streets of their neighbourhoods, there is also something to be said for the solitary Ramadan. Every year I dread it, and every year I miss it.

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