It’s okay to miss a day or five, if you are sick or traveling, or are on your ladies’ holiday. I did not want to die where Elvis was born. The statue of the King spoke to me and I realized if I didn’t drink water I would drop down dead just like he did. We were at Elvis’s house in Tupelo, Mississippi. I broke down and broke my fast only once on tour. Some nights I didn’t break my fast until 10:30 p.m., but I survived. I was hot, thirsty, and tired of bigotry. For the first time in my history of Ramadans, I complained. We would spend all day on the street doing interviews with the locals, who weren’t too fond of Muslims. I was filming a documentary in addition to performing nightly. My most challenging Ramadan came in the form of a ten-day road trip in 2011, in America’s Deep South, on a comedy tour called “The Muslims Are Coming.” Ramadan, which moves back ten days each year, happened to land in August. My mom has donated on my behalf every single year I have fasted, just in case it ever got to be too much and I had to give up. If you cannot afford to do so, you should instead perform any acts of charity within your capability. Those who cannot fast during Ramadan get to make a donation that will feed a hungry person for the duration of the holy month. I could eat whatever I wanted at sunset, thank you very much.Įvery Ramadan, without fail, my mother has given me the option to not fast. I would shove their candy away and tell them not to push their beliefs on me. They’d try to slip me a butterscotch candy at lunchtime. I had teachers who genuinely feared for my life and were convinced that I was being forced by my horrible Muslim parents to fast. In my day, teachers weren’t as culturally savvy as they are now.
Ramadan is not as much fun in America, where you are the only one fasting. Regardless of the heat, it’s fun to fast for Ramadan when you are in a country where the majority of folks around you are also starving. Muslims celebrate for three days, because after thirty days of fasting, one day simply isn’t enough. Eid is the celebration that marks the end of fasting. I knew that by fasting against the odds I had been born with, I’d totally get into heaven and, more important, would get amazing gifts for Eid. My family was over the moon, and I refused to show any weakness. The Qur’an states clearly in Surah 2, Ayat 185 that those who have medical conditions are pardoned, so I was treated like a champ for fasting. That means that technically I am exempt from fasting, even though it is one of the five pillars of Islam and extremely important to the faith. I’m one of those crazy Muslims who loves Ramadan. During Ramadan, those observing the fast abstain from food, beverages, smoking, and kissing. It was late June, and the Middle East is a sauna at that time of year. I was eight years old and on summer vacation in my parents’ village. The first Ramadan I ever fasted was no joke. I spent my school days in beautiful New Jersey and my summers in the war zone known as the West Bank. I was born and raised in the United States. They offer diverse perspectives that speak to past, present, and future generations. The accounts in this collection ask readers to think about disabled people not as individuals who need to be “fixed,” but as members of a community with its own history, culture, and movements. The seventeen eye-opening essays in Disability Visibility, all written by disabled people, offer keen insight into the complex and rich disability experience, examining life's ableism and inequality, its challenges and losses, and celebrating its wisdom, passion, and joy.
Disabled young people will be proud to see themselves reflected in this hopeful, compelling, and insightful essay collection, adapted for young adults from the critically acclaimed adult book, Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century that "sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences." - Chicago Tribune, "Best books published in summer 2020" (Vintage/Knopf Doubleday edition).
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