Hello and welcome to We Live In A
Society
This section will feature cultural
stories from countries from all over the world
The first episode will feature one of my best friends, Ebi
who's Persian, from Iran, who's lived
in Australia now for four years
and so he'll be talking in this episode
about one of the biggest cultural and religious traditions
in the Persian Empire in the Middle East - which is ramadan
Hi everyone my name is Ebrahim, i'm from Iran, ethnically Persian
I've been living here in newcastle australia
for five years
but I actually was born and um grew up actually in
south west of Iran in Ahwaz, Khuzestan State and did my bachelor there and then
moved to the capital Tehran
to do my masters and then i'm here in
Australia to continue my education.
The next thing I  want to talk about
is ramadan so ramadan
um is a religious actually event
um where people do fasting
so that means that people start
um actually the day
with suhur which is actually
before the sunrise they have something
and then stop eating for until the um sunsets
and so the whole actually um
the time of the day they don't eat or
they don't drink anything um
and then at the end of the day and the
sun sets um time um they actually
start eating and um that is called
iftari so this is
um really um actually
um important especially for those
um religious people um
and it's been part of our culture um
in the last um actually um centuries
so the the reason of doing ramadan
is um actually
regardless that this is actually
compulsory for religious
people there are some reasons and ideas
behind it
first of all
you stop eating which is um sort of
sympathizing with poor people second
um is um actually
you try to train your body
and another reason is to experience
experiencing the hardship and
um you know physical um
you know difficulties and things like
that and that makes you to improve your soul
and the third reason of doing ramadan is
the health benefits of it, so according
to some actually
um scientific facts it's good for the
body
to fast  a proportion of the day um and then at the end of the month we
celebrate um the ending of the
month um by donating, which is a good part of it
So ramadan is is one month and it actually um changes
um during the actually
um the the years it's
just um it happens at different seasons
um and it comes forward actually ten
days per year so there isn't a fixed time for
that because it's according to the luna calendar
Yeah, thats it about ramadan
Back in 2016 um, I decided to actually
um do ramadan with Ebi in support of him
because he'd only recently arrived in
the country and i just thought i'd you
know do it to support him and help him
you know adjust to australian life while
I learned a bit about his culture
So despite the fact that i'm not muslim
I chose to do uh ramadan for reasons
three
uh first for the for the discipline
I wanted to do something that was going
to be difficult with a lot of temptations to
see if i could stick it out to sort of
increase my
I guess my character, my inner minor strength my discipline I thought it would be a
really good challenge so that was one
reason
second reason was I guess compassion um, I wanted to empathize with people who
don't have access to food and who go hungry
and don't have access to fresh or clean
water
so I thought that would be a good
experience
to increase my my empathy and
the third reason was because at the end
of ramadan you do something charitable
and so I believe like you know helping
other people is the key to happiness so
I thought
it was, I thought it would be  a really good
experience um overall
So in 2016 ramadan was in june in Australia so it was winter so that
worked out really well for me because
they were very short um
very short time between sunrise and
sunset and one of the things I like
about ramadan is that every year the
the start date changes by 10 days so the
throughout the years um you experience ramadan through every
season and I was lucky that it was in in winter I
don't know how I would do it in summer
with the really long
daylight hours um so
first morning of um ramadan I woke up I
think it was the 7th of July
7th of June I woke up like 4:30 am and
decided to like
gorge myself stupid because I figured I
can't eat all day I need the calories
and you know to get me through the day
that turned out to be a really poor
choice because I just felt bloated and
ill
normally I just have coffee for
breakfast so um
I just felt really apathetic and it was
it was not a good choice
and also um I couldn't go back to sleep
like I woke up at 4:30 there was no
getting back to sleep at that point
so I just went into work um luckily I
was at that point in time a post-doctoral research scientist at a
university so I could make my own hours um so
but that first couple of days I gotta
say it was the first couple of days was
like absolute hell I was just tired and hungry
and just wasn't so much necessarily the
hunger was more the thirst
like it was just really hard um and I
was counting down the hours until
sunset but sunset at five o'clock which was really lucky so it wasn't wasn't too
long of a day and I couldn't wait to have iftar so
iftar is the breaking of the fast
um usually with like water and dates so
I really want to thank Ebi for keeping me in constant supply of dates
during the ramadan period and for um providing
me with many iftars and my partner Josh also did ramadan
with him, with us, so I want to thank him
as well because like on some of the
harder days you know there was that just that moral
support um you know for someone who
isn't
of muslim background and used to doing
ramadan so just to have someone who's
going through the exact um situation that you are was
really was really helpful um because we relate
to each other and help each other
through it
um I think probably the hardest
the hardest days was when we went
camping um I went camping with my mates up on Broken Back Mountain
and you know like I had a lot of beers
the next morning I was
hungover as fuck and all I wanted was
like
water and like fat I just wanted like
macca's cheeseburgers or a bacon
sandwich um it was it was it was fucking hell
like not being able to eat
until sunset that was a really shit day
um second was when I went to Supernova in
Sydney um just because just walking around in
all day with the in a confined space
with so many people
and it was just stifling hot and you
know I couldn't drink any water that was
a really tough day um constant headache that entire day um
All my family my friends my lab group
they were all taking bets on the date at
which I would crack and and give up and eat and you know
they'd always come in with their
delicious smelling lunches or you know
their coffee at four o'clock and
you know like just try and get me to
give up but I didn't and i'm happy to
say
for that entire month um between sunrise
and sunset I
um not a single morsel of food or
molecule of water
um went into my mouth and it was it was
a great experience to go through it with
Ebi and just to uh to learn more about
iranian culture along the way
and um we we broke iftar a lot of the
time with other middle eastern people so it was really
great because I got to try lots of new
foods um
and yeah it was just a really enjoyable
experience and I actually physically
just felt a lot better like I just felt better not
like fasting and only eating for
certain periods throughout the day um I
slept better - the only downside is that um you know
i'm very active person so for that month I wasn't able to go
hiking on weekends or really do any kind
of physical activity
um while the sun was shining because it
just
you know you can't do that without water
so that that was limiting in in terms of
you know the things that I could do but
other than that um yeah it was it was a great experience
