Ramadan fasting nourishes spirit of Iran native living in Wilton.

WILTON – It’s 6:50 p.m. on a Thursday, and since it’s fall, it’s almost entirely dark out. The table is laid with dates and halva, sugar cubes, and rice pudding topped with cinnamon. Dinner is simmering on the stove.

Nahid Dalpour sits in an armchair watching TV. She looks happy – serene even – for someone you’d expect to be chomping at the bit for food.

Not a morsel has passed her lips since sunrise.

Not even a sip of water is allowed for observant Muslims during daylight hours, if they are taking part in the Ramadan fast.

It’s 6:55 now, and Dalpour is still waiting. “I don’t eat until seven,” she says. “I want to make sure there’s no light. After a whole day, what’s the point of not waiting?”

She chats about her kids, her university professor husband, her job as a realtor, her family in Iran.

Some might think fasting’s hard, she says, but it’s not bad.

“You get used to it,” she says. “The first few days are hard. Then you are used to it.”

Work makes it easier, she adds. When you’re busy, you notice it less. The fact it’s fall, with short(er) days, also makes it more bearable. “Sometimes in summer I don’t fast,” she confesses. Muslim holidays move around the calendar, since Islamic lunar months are shorter than western months.

Fasting during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar is one of the five obligations observant Muslims try to fulfill during their lives. Muslims are also called to profess their faith, pray at least five times daily, give to charity, and make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their life.

The first prayer of the day -fajr – starts before sunrise. Dalpour says she prays it almost every day. “When you’ve been doing it most of your life, your body clock wakes you up then, anyway.” During Ramadan, she has her first meal before it’s light, and then it’s no food, drink, gum, or anything else until nightfall.

“One may eat and drink at any time during the night until you can plainly distinguish a white thread from a black thread by the daylight: then keep the fast until night,'” is the rule, according to the Islamic Society of Boston’s Web site on Ramadan.

It’s not oppressive, she says. Fasting isn’t meant to punish your body or make you miserable. It’s supposed to bring you closer to God, to teach you patience and endurance and show you your strength and willpower. “We eat for 11 of the months – we do what we want, for 11 of the months,” Dalpour says. “For one month, we can hold back.”

So, with nearly one-sixth of the world, she fasts. The fast commemorates a number of things to different people. Above all, it’s a command from God. It was during Ramadan Muslims believe Muhammad received the first verses of the Quran from the angel Gabriel, “Recite, in the name of thy Lord who created/created a man from a clot of blood. Recite!”

Dalpour stands up and pours steaming hot tea into two cups. She gets herself a Pepsi, and she takes a few tiny bites of rice pudding.

She begins to talk about the eftar (Ramadan dinner) meals with her family in Iran, with brothers and sisters, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.

She enjoys celebrating in the United States with her friends and family, but she misses her relatives back home. Her face falls for a moment, then brightens again.

Iran, for many Americans, means the hostage crisis, the current crisis, women in chadors, and angry imams chanting “Maag Barg Amrika” – death to America.

But Dalpour, a self-avowed religious Muslim Persian woman, doesn’t wear a chador or a veil, but prays and fasts and reads the Quran.

“I don’t like to wear it,” she says. “The Quran never says you must wear hejab.” It only says to dress modestly, she says.

Many Iranian women – especially young people – feel the same way, she says. Like everywhere, being forced to do something makes people resent it.

Dalpour spoons some brilliantly-colored saffron rice onto a plate, and joins nearly 5 million American Muslims in finally breaking her fast.