NEW YORK, Aug 15: For hundreds of New York City’s Muslim taxi drivers fasting and prayers can be a formidable challenge: finding a mosque around Iftar prayers and later Taravees.

For one cabbie of African descent, the biggest test during Ramazan is keeping up his stamina during a shift that typically features mind-numbing traffic, the threat of parking tickets and the never-ending drone of TV in his backseat. He said driving on an empty stomach while dealing with the daily guff from passengers becomes a spiritual exercise.

In this long hot summer, fasting time (16 hours) can be really long and a real test of human endurance.

“When someone abuses on you, you have to let it go,” he said. “When someone wants to have drama with you, you have to let it go — those are the principles of Ramazan”, he observes.

Drivers who chose not to eat in the mosque huddle on the sidewalk in small groups to consume their long-awaited iftari meals.

“I love this: it’s called pakora, samosa and chana,” said one driver from Bangladesh. He made the food disappear in a hurry, like anyone would after fasting for 16 hours.

PRAYERS: At JFK airport’s taxi lot, hundreds of drivers lined up awaiting a fare to Manhattan.

About two dozen drivers made use of a makeshift prayer area, bowing and kneeling next to a pair of public restrooms.

Shaubaiu, a Nigerian driver in a white shirt, who was about to jump into his cab again paused to complain that it’s hard to make enough money when you’re pulling over to pray an extra two hours a day.

“You can’t really do what you’ve got to do,” he said. “You can’t pray on time. I was supposed to be praying a long time ago but I couldn’t because you’re always in a rush, you want to get the lease money.”

Around 8pm as the day’s light faded, cabbies rushed into a mosque in downtown Manhattan. A mountain of their shoes rose in the vestibule and soon Azan emanated from a loudspeaker at the top of the mosque. Outside, vendors selling prayer books and sweet treats waited patiently for the cabbies to emerge from inside.

As the month of Ramazan nears the end, the conversation is all about Eid celebrations and both here in the United States and back at home. Whether it is Cairo, Islamabad, Dhaka, Abuja, New Delhi or Ankara etc, one misses the loved ones.