Ramadan in Bahrain: I can't manage another morsel

I am about to declare a sickeningly first world problem: I am tired of eating.

We're in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan, and while my Muslim friends abstain from food until sundown, I not only eat my way through the day, but also join them in their hearty Iftar, the breaking of the fast, with feral gusto. These nightly exercises involve a vast mishmash of cuisine, much like a luxurious Friday brunch.

Not every expat will be going to Iftars, unless they want to sample the experience. I, in the name of journalism, have to go. Writing for a lifestyle magazine means I have to carry out ‘research’ by eating at five-star hotel buffets until I’m incapacitated, in order that Bahrain’s foodies know where to go to emulate my gorging.

_{A sign in Mananama, Bahrain, advertising food for consumption after the Ramadan fast is broken (AP Photo/Ali Fraidoon)}

The culture of eating for the sake of eating is as much a national pastime in Bahrain as queuing is in Britain. Everything is planned around the most appealing places to eat. Although the island is tiny, by my count of the restaurant listings on the Time Out Bahrain website, there are around 600 eateries in a country that is 295 miles square. The food and beverage market, whatever time of year, is always buoyant.

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My UK friends often ask me what food I miss most from my time living there. “Well,” I say blankly, “nothing”. I don’t even miss the very British things like scones or toad in the hole because you can get any food you want here – and it’s always going to be top rate, even if it’s not from a five-star hotel.

Ah, hotels. The epicentre of Friday brunches. Take any Gulf country and you’ll find that its expats are master brunchers, able to chomp through vast amounts of food and guzzle bottomless glasses of champagne. There's this savage urgency to eat and drink even when you’re near defeat. Expats eat everything in sight at brunch – zip busting or not – for fear of having a FOMO (fear of missing out) moment.

These brunches feature cuisine from every corner of the world and brunching takes hours. You start at noon and finish around 4pm at which point, with a hand on your cramped appendix, you hobble to the car.

Even when it's not Friday, people take the attitude 'let’s eat because we have nothing better to do’. And now I’ve got food fatigue and it’s getting too much. The food consumption on this island is not even counterbalanced by being able to walk it off on the way home. The lack of exercise involved with living here has made dough of me and my expat comrades.

I want to know what it feels like to be hungry again – although admitting it makes me cringe. And I want that pang of hunger to be broken with a cheese sandwich – nothing fancy.

Outside of Ramadan, my day to day diet is much healthier – based on raw/vegan eating when I am not gorging myself for work. But the concept of healthy eating here is not as widespread as in the UK – there are just a few juice shops and organic cafés which, for the health-conscious expat, are a saving grace.

Meanwhile, supermarkets stocking Western products are a battleground, on which I fight nearly every day. Mainstream products back home are exclusive imports which are carried in limited stock here. Expats fight tooth and nail to get their favourites. I’ve been looking everywhere for my favourite brown rice milk since I first found it a month ago – I unapologetically cleared the shelves then, but have been searching high and low ever since, with no luck.

More cartons will turn up in due course and when that happens I’m going to fend off anyone in my way. In the meantime I’m off to exacerbate my food fatigue with another punishing round of mindless eating.

Georgie Bradley is an English-Greek journalist who lives in Bahrain. Follow her on Twitter @georgiebradley6.