My laptop runs out of battery and I climb off my cousin’s king sized bed we share, where we’re currently nesting, mindlessly online. Upstairs the house is dark and still and I hear the voices of the pesh merga soldiers outside, awake, talking, laughing. They have woken up to eat before the first call to prayer, I realize, as the sound of the muezzin suddenly joins their chatter. I rush to the fridge and chug a bottle of water, wondering what I’m doing. I’ve never been religious, and certainly not Muslim.

Yet, here I am, in Kurdistan during the holy month of Ramadan. It’s 3:30 in the morning and although the windows are only showing a hint of light, the call to prayer is announcing the sunrise and with it the start of the fast that will last until sunset. To keep fast all day long in a place this hot, you have to drink a lot of water before the day begins.

In the evening, as the sky turns pink and Dubai One cuts from its programming to broadcast the call to prayer, set to a silhouette of a mosque, we gather in the kitchen. The already prepared food is served into dishes and carried to the table as the local muezzin joins the televised one in call to prayer. Without ceremony we break fast, first with dates and then soup, and then the feast that’s overwhelming after fasting all day. Coca cola and mastaw, a drink of yogurt and water. Long-grained Kurdish rice, fried potatoes with onions and lambs, and bamya, an okra and lamb stew. Shifta, ground lamb that’s baked and fried, and a salad of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and lemons. When we can’t eat anymore we clear the table and bring dessert. First chai, with lots of sugar. Then traditional a Ramadan dessert: freshly fried donuts soaked in sugar glaze, peach cobbler topped with thickened cream, a custard made from milk, orange jello, salted nuts, and a plate piled with peaches, grapes, and plums. Happy Ramadan, or, in Kurdish, Ramazan pirozbet!

I wasn’t sure if I was going to fast until I started to, and it wasn’t so much a conscious thought out decision as much as it simply felt like something that should be done. My great aunt who I’m living with didn’t even realize I was fasting until the third day of Ramadan, when she asked why I didn’t want any of the food she’d offered.

I said, “I’m fasting,”

She said, “good,” then went to the kitchen to finish preparing the iftar meal she’d invited the rest of the family to that night.

There’s certainly a lot being said about Ramadan. I’ve seen a dozen headlines, like NPR’s “What you might not know about Ramadan,” and I’ve heard the criticisms, like how Ramadan is as big of a mass marketed consumer-fest as Christmas.

While I can claim no wisdom on the topic, I can say that the point of trying to analyze or “understand” Ramadan seems rather distant and irrelevant here and now, as the evening light turns the room gold and my grandfather and great uncle arrive, then the youngest relative, 37 days old, in tow with his toddler siblings, and the loudness of the young and the old all settle around the table as the fast is broken.