IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
What’s it like to fast for Ramadan? Tasmin Ahmed writes about its importance to her, and why it is about more than fasting.
(Allure, approx 8 mins reading time)
Practicing Muslims, particularly during this time, also partake in Zakāt, or the giving of alms to those in economic hardship based on a portion of accumulated wealth. The very giving of Zakāt is considered to be an act of cleansing and community. It’s a form of compensation earned from an individual’s wealth acquired through interest or other means, and it serves as a mechanism to alleviate poverty in our communities.
2. An open letter about female coaches
Pau Gasol writes about how there’s never been a female head coach in the NBA – and how gender stereotypes play into that.
(Players Tribune, approx 12 mins reading time)
The argument that I see most often is thankfully the one that’s easiest to disprove: It’s this idea that, at the absolute highest level of basketball, a woman isn’t capable of coaching men. “Yeah, female coaches are fine coaching women’s college basketball, or the WNBA,” the argument goes. “But the NBA? The NBA is different.”
Mohanned Younis was 22 when he took his life in Gaza. His death shed light on the lives of young people in this part of the world.
(The Guardian, approx 30 mins reading time)
But the very public mourning for the death of a talented young writer meant that Mohanned’s suicide was not just one more tragedy in a territory where thousands of young lives are cut short. Now it was impossible to deny what many had been whispering: the misery of the siege and despair for the future, especially among the most talented young Gazans, was leading to a disturbing upsurge in suicides.
Ronan Farrow is interviewed about his career, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein, and #MeToo.
(The Guardian, approx 19 mins reading time)
By the time that he was five, Ronan had witnessed his parents’ epically bitter break-up, his father’s new relationship with his 22-year-old sister (Farrow’s adopted daughter) Soon-Yi (the cause of the vicious split), and the allegations that his father had sexually abused his seven-year-old adopted sister Dylan Farrow. A court case and custody battle ensued in the relentless glare of the world’s media.
A range of men write about losing their virginity late, and what that meant for their lives.
(BBC, approx 13 mins reading time)
I have suffered, and am suffering, all my life from debilitating love shyness, which has completely ruined any chances I may have had of having a satisfying and intimate family life and fathering any children. I’ve no doubt that love shyness is a real condition and is not simply a part of social anxiety disorder. I can be quite brave in many social situations but if there is someone I fancy I am completely clueless as to what to do to take it to the next level.
6. ‘My lovely dad tried to kill me’
Robyn Hollingworth writes about her father’s diagnosis for early-onset Alzheimer’s, and what her family went through to care for him.
(BBC, approx 10 mins reading time)
My dad, David Coles, was a charmingly intelligent self-made man. He was a civil engineer and built power stations all over the world. He had a beard and moustache combo that had seen him through the decades, gently fading from mouse-brown to pale grey. I idolised him.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
In 2005, Tim Zimmerman wrote about a man called Dave Shaw, who found the body of a man who and disappeared 10 years earlier. He found the body at the bottom of the biggest underwater cave in the world.
(Outside, approx 51 mins reading time)
Only two divers had ever been to this depth in Bushman’s before. One of them, a South African named Nuno Gomes, had claimed a world record in 1996 when he hit bottom, on open-circuit gear, at 927 feet. Gomes had turned immediately for the surface. But Shaw, a Cathay Pacific Airways pilot based in Hong Kong and a man who had become one of the most audacious explorers in cave diving, didn’t strive for depth alone.
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