A winter month for a decade

The month that ended around the middle of March began in the second half of February.

Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier every year, so this is not a one-off. The next one is expected in the first half of February, the ones after that in January, and before long it reaches December. The arithmetic is public and anybody here can do it. What almost nobody has done is work out what the month is actually like once it lands there.

It becomes a different product. The fast is short because the day is short. Iftar arrives a little after six rather than near seven, and by the time the month reaches December it will come before half past five. The daytime is workable, so the morning is not the write-off it is in a summer month. And the hours after the meal are long, dry and cool, which in Riyadh or Jeddah or Cairo in February means the street, the terrace, the garden and the corniche instead of a mall and a car park.

Almost every regional playbook I have read was built from the memory of the hot ones. The punishing afternoon. The whole month indoors. Delivery instead of dining. A crowd that could not be outside before midnight, and a second peak after it.

That was true, and it was true for years, and it is leaving the calendar a week at a time.

Meanwhile the month now lands on the busiest fixed dates of the year here. Founding Day in one February, a Valentine's week in another, Coptic Christmas coming into range after that.

None of that was decided. It is arithmetic nobody was watching. A plan that still assumes a March month and a seven o'clock iftar is not wrong about this year. It is planning for a decade that has already ended.