The Ramadan Nights | ليالي رمضان
"After iftar at her brother-in-law's house, a widow finds comfort in unexpected arms. The holy month brings sacred hungers—and profane ones."
The Ramadan Nights
ليالي رمضان
The adhan for Maghrib echoes across Cairo.
Allahu Akbar.
I break my fast with a date and water, the way the Prophet taught us. Around me, my late husband's family eats together—his mother, his sisters, his brother.
His brother Youssef.
Who hasn't stopped looking at me since I arrived.
Mahmoud died two years ago.
Cancer. Quick and merciless. We had fifteen years together, no children, and now I'm a forty-three-year-old widow living in his family's apartment building because I have nowhere else to go.
"Eat, Amira," my mother-in-law urges. "Sahtein."
I eat. The food is delicious—she's outdone herself for Ramadan. But I'm not tasting it.
I'm feeling Youssef's eyes on me.
He's younger than Mahmoud was.
Thirty-eight. Also divorced—his wife left him for a man in London three years ago. We're the family's two cautionary tales, seated across from each other at iftar every night.
"More sambousek?" he offers, holding out the plate.
Our fingers brush when I take one.
Neither of us pulls away.
After dinner, we pray Maghrib together.
The women behind the men, as is proper. But I can see the back of Youssef's head as he prostrates, and I think things that have no place in prayer.
Astaghfirullah.
I beg forgiveness for thoughts I can't stop having.
The nights are long in Ramadan.
After taraweeh prayers at the mosque, I return to my small apartment on the third floor. Youssef lives on the fourth. Sometimes I hear him pacing above me.
Tonight, someone knocks on my door.
"I brought you atayef," he says. "Mama made too many."
"It's midnight."
"I know." He holds up the plate. "I couldn't sleep."
I shouldn't let him in.
I let him in.
We eat the sweet dumplings at my kitchen table.
The silence is thick. Heavy. Ramadan air, charged with something more than piety.
"Amira—"
"Don't."
"I haven't said anything."
"You don't have to." I look at him. "I see how you look at me. I've seen it for months."
"And how do I look at you?"
"Like you're hungry. And not for atayef."
He sets down his fork.
"You were my brother's wife."
"I was."
"This is haram."
"I know."
"I think about you constantly." His voice breaks. "During fasting, when I should be thinking of Allah, I think of you. Your laugh. Your eyes. The way you move."
"Youssef—"
"Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you don't feel it too."
I can't tell him he's wrong.
Because I do feel it. Have felt it since Mahmoud's funeral, when Youssef held me as I sobbed and something shifted in my chest.
"We can't," I whisper.
"I know."
"Your mother would never forgive us."
"I know."
"This is Ramadan. The holiest month."
"I know." He stands. Crosses to me. "But I've fasted all day. And when I break my fast, I want it to be with you."
He kisses me.
And I let him.
His mouth tastes like honey and rose water.
His hands cup my face, then slide lower—my neck, my shoulders, the curves he's been watching for months.
"We shouldn't—" I gasp.
"We shouldn't." He doesn't stop. "But I need you, Amira. Allah forgive me, I need you."
He lifts me onto the kitchen table.
Pushes aside the plates, the sweets, everything between us. My jalabiya rides up as he steps between my thighs.
"I've wanted this," he confesses. "Every iftar. Watching you across the table. Imagining this."
"What else did you imagine?"
"Everything." His hands find the hem of my dress. "Every possible sin."
He undresses me in the kitchen light.
I'm not young. Not thin. My body is soft in ways that would make magazine women cringe. But Youssef looks at me like I'm the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
"Subhanallah," he breathes. "You're perfect."
"I'm not—"
"You are. To me. Perfect."
He worships me on the kitchen table.
His mouth on my breasts first—sucking, biting, making me whimper. Then lower, kissing down my belly, my thighs.
"The Prophet said," he murmurs against my skin, "that the bad smell coming from the mouth of a fasting person is better in the sight of Allah than the scent of musk."
"Why are you—"
"Because even now, even doing this, I can only think in hadith." He kisses my center. "And I think Allah would forgive me for this hunger."
He devours me.
Two years of widowhood, two years of nothing but my own hand in the dark, and now his tongue is inside me and I'm crying out loud enough to wake the whole building.
"Quiet," he gasps. "Mama is downstairs."
"I can't—oh God—ya Allah—"
"Come for me, Amira. Break your fast with me."
I shatter against his mouth.
My hands in his hair, my thighs clamped around his head, my whole body shaking with release.
Before I can recover, he's inside me.
We fuck on my kitchen table.
Hard and desperate, two starving people finally eating. The table creaks beneath us. The plates rattle. Somewhere, the atayef falls to the floor.
"Yes—aiwa—harder—"
"Amira—you feel—"
"Don't stop—don't you dare stop—"
He spills inside me.
His face buried in my neck, his body trembling, his seed hot and thick. We stay like that, tangled together, breathing hard.
"Astaghfirullah," he whispers.
"Astaghfirullah," I agree.
But neither of us means it.
It becomes our Ramadan ritual.
Every night after taraweeh, he comes to my apartment. Every night, we sin in new ways.
In my bed. Against the wall. Once, on my prayer rug—the most haram of all.
"We should stop," he says, even as he's inside me.
"After Ramadan."
"After Eid."
We both know we won't stop.
The last night of Ramadan.
Laylat al-Qadr—the Night of Power, when prayers are worth a thousand months.
"We should pray," I say.
"We should."
He takes me three times instead.
Eid morning, I wake in his arms.
Sunlight streams through the window. The fasting is over. The holy month complete.
"Marry me," he says.
"What?"
"Marry me. Make this halal. I can't go back to pretending I don't love you."
"Your mother—"
"Will understand. Eventually." He kisses me. "I love you, Amira. I've loved you since before I should have. Let me love you properly."
We tell his mother after Eid prayers.
She cries. Yells. Calls me names I won't repeat.
Then she stops. Looks at her son. Looks at me.
"You're both fools," she says finally. "But Mahmoud would want you happy. Both of you."
"Mama—"
"Get married. Quickly. Before more scandal." She wipes her eyes. "I expect grandchildren. Mahmoud couldn't give them to me. Maybe you two can."
We have nikah a month later.
Small ceremony. Family only. His sisters cry—happy tears, they insist.
That night, in our new apartment—the one between our old ones—he makes love to me properly.
"My wife," he murmurs. "Finally."
"Your wife," I agree.
One year later
Ramadan again.
I'm fasting, but with difficulty—I'm six months pregnant, and the doctor says I can break fast if needed.
Youssef brings me water at sunset. Dates. His mother's atayef.
"Same as last year," he smiles.
"Not quite." I take his hand, place it on my belly. "This is new."
He kneels before me. Kisses my stomach.
"Thank you," he whispers. "For everything. For that first night. For saying yes."
The adhan echoes across Cairo.
Allahu Akbar.
God is great.
And so is this love we built.
From iftar tables.
From Ramadan nights.
From hunger that became something holy after all.
Eid Mubarak.
The End.