Ramadan. Day 4. Sig, Mascara, Algeria (08.25.09)

The heat here covers your mouth and you've no energy to scream. A small breeze but no relief in all the sun blinding, no, binding your eyees closed into your scull.
Now you smell sweet figs in syrup bubbling next to Ras el-Hanout spices and fine grains of sheesha bubbling up to the surface of the harira soup.
I sneak and eat soup with Zakeria. She makes no comment but takes note, politely, if that ca be, that I've broken the fast. That in fact I never have fasted more than 1 hours time.
Outside the pushcarts line up, blocking off the street- grapes and figs soft and ripe, in their green or black skins, some split. On the corner is sardines. The seller splashes handfuls of water over them to keep them glistening but it is 95* and not yet noon, so fat lot of good that does the silvery stinky skins. My skin is crawling misquitos suspend from the ceilings elaborate molded ceiling.
Spindly dancers, the bugs wait out the day for the sun to dampen the sky in peach and moon to cut the sky into night. But the edan calls for prayer and all the world goes silent. All the city folds in on itself and in every home the feast of evening begins.