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For Ramadan, Long Days .Article Comments more in New York-Culture
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Many Muslims have taken pains in recent weeks to prepare themselves for the month of fasting and reflection, during which they must abstain from consuming anything, even water, between dawn and dusk. Some have been steeling themselves with air max
daylong practice fasts.
"It's going to be hard," said Malika Mejdoub, a 29-year-old who is training for the Chicago Marathon in October. The Queens resident, who aims to qualify for the 2012 Moroccan Olympic team, is scaling back her daily training regimen from two runs to one.
"I am going to train smart this month. I don't want to kill myself this month," she said.
Having to sit by while coworkers snack and lunch nearby isn't easy, but fasting is not meant to be a hardship, said Shamsi Ali, associate imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. "Very few Muslims realize that fasting is a means to change ourselves, to become better individuals so that you may achieve self-consciousness," he said, adding: "We realize that we are not just a physical being, we are a spiritual being."
Still, temptation comes in many forms: coffee, water, Cheap Nike Men's Air Max 2011 Leather Black Silver
cigarettes, the smell of griddled meat wafting from a street vendor's cart.
"The first two days are the hardest; once you get past them, your system gets used to it," says Boukari Maiga, manager at a milk plant in Queens. He expects that mornings will be hardest for him, and said he plans to load up on vegetables and protein during the evening meal. He'll also begin eating again at 3:30 a.m., before sunrise begins the day's fast.
Workers with flexible schedules say they plan to take advantage of them, and the New York Police Department will allow Muslim officers to shift assignments during Ramadan.
Mohamed Amen, an officer who works the overnight shift that ends at 6:30 a.m., says it will be Nike Air Max Wavy
tough finding time to eat. But the 39-year-old father of two says that the switching shifts would make the fasting period even harder, since he would be working—and working up an appetite—during the warmest periods of the day.
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Posted on : Aug 1, 2011
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