Throughout Cairo at sundown during Ramadan, people come out into the streets to eat after a day of abstaining from food, drink, cigarettes, even chewing gum and sex. If all has gone well they will also have avoided harmful thoughts during daylight hours. If you go out shopping or walking in the middle of the day, you will find people obviously suffering from the lack of caffeine and nicotine. A few of our neighbors stay up very late drinking coffee and smoking, perhaps to flood the bloodstream for the day of fasting. This will continue for a lunar month. I can draw some analogies to the Thanksgiving/Christmas period in the United States. People tend to have more folks--mostly family--into their homes for dinner. Most conspicuously there is an underlying emotional tension composed of sadness and hope among the people. Like Christmas, Ramadan is a way of marking time. People during their fasting no doubt think of dead loved ones, estranged family members, lost lovers and broken marriages, of sweeter times in the past. It is also a holy month which seems to fire the religious imagination. It is common in Cairo to see at all times young men reading the Qu'raan in restaurants, in front of their places of business, in vehicles and elsewhere. You will routinely find policeman or soldiers on duty with their leather-bound pocket-sized Qu'raans held up to their faces. Only now it seems more pervasive, with the most unlikely looking fellows cracking the Scriptures in public places.