Pet King

Chapter 1148: Ramadan

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Second day.

“Gah gah! I’m not happy! Where are there only female amulets and no male amulets? As expected, there has been gender discrimination since 6,000 years ago!”

Early in the morning, Richard landed on the table and fiddled with Zhang Zian’s amulets, bought from Lazart’s jewelry store. It put two amulets in the shape of the female sign side by side and was very noisy.

“Your Highness! This must be the will of the gods, to represent that this servant and Your Highness should be happy together for a hundred years, or to put it simply, be lesbians!” Snowy Lionet happily hugged the other two amulets and rolled around on the mat.

Zhang Zian brushed his teeth as he used his phone to check the news, long ago having lost the energy to spit out insults at their words.

“Wah! Cheapskate Zian! Why isn’t there one for me? I also want a gold bracelet with my name written in hieroglyphs! Those souls in the broadcast room don’t believe that I came to Egypt. I must prove it to them! Hello! Did you hear that? I’m talking to you!”

Sihwa saw that he was ignoring her and angrily splashed water from the bathtub on him.

Snowy Lionet and Sihwa had slept on their mobile phones all day yesterday. Richard was full of energy. Although it had followed them all the way, it had been standing on Zhang Zian’s shoulder all the time. It was not tired and had begun to make a lot of noise from the early morning.

As for the other elfins, they were tired when they visited Khan el-Khalili Market in the morning and other places nearby in the afternoon, but they had seen a lot of new things and gained a lot of new knowledge, although the people and things they met had not been 100% pleasant.

Travelling was like that. They would meet with good things, and they would meet with bad things, but as long as the good was much greater than the bad, the trip would not be a waste.

The most tired was Vladimir. Yesterday, it had come back in the evening, face covered in gray dust, and fallen asleep, which reminded Zhang Zian of the days when he’d first arrived at Binhai City.

After brushing his teeth and washing his face, he announced to the elfins, “Let’s go somewhere far away today, starting with the Great Pyramid, and see if there’s any way to leave the Holy Cat statue in the Pyramid while we’re sightseeing.”

One of their reasons for coming to Egypt had been to solve the problem of the Holy Cat statue once and for all, and they could not just keep playing.

“Gah gah! Who is going with us today? I saw that Jack was exchanging love glances with you yesterday. Was there any adultery?” Richard asked mischievously.

Zhang Zian automatically ignored the second half of the sentence and said, “Today we are the only ones. The others are going to follow Professor Wei Kang to Cairo University for academic exchanges. But I’m going to attend their morning meeting first. You all wait in the room. I’ll bring breakfast back.”

“Meow meow meow! You stinky man, the roast pigeons you brought back to me yesterday were all cold!” Snowy Lionet protested with glaring eyes.

“What’s the matter? Just put it out in the sun and it’ll be fine. You don’t even need a microwave.”

Zhang Zian’s answer left Snowy Lionet speechless. After all, Egypt’s summer sunshine at noon was more than enough to cook eggs on stones.

“Meow! There were so many people yesterday...” Galaxy said timidly.

In the Khan el-Khalili market, people came and went, and Galaxy had to avoid them left and right, trying to stay away from people. It had little leisure time to play.

“Actually, the Khan el-Khalili market is not the most crowded in the daytime. It is most crowded during the night after sunset,” Zhang Zian comforted it. “But rest assured, it will soon be Ramadan in Egypt. During Ramadan, the custom here is that you can’t eat or drink water from sunrise to sunset. As a result, most of the local people will go out less during the day and lie at home to save energy. They will only start to wander and eat after sunset. So during Ramadan, there aren’t so many people out there.”

“They can’t even drink water?” Famous looked sideways at the blazing sun outside. “Won’t people die?”

“Actually, many people are not so pious now. They will eat a little and drink a little in private, rather than go on a total hunger strike in the daytime,” Zhang Zian explained. “Even so, people still go out less.”

During Ramadan, there would be a strange phenomenon. During the day, the city was cold and quiet. Many shops were closed, or the opening time was delayed to nine o’clock at night, and the closing time was delayed to three o’clock in the morning. People went to sleep at three o’clock in the morning when they had had enough food and drink.

Civil servants couldn’t stop working, but they also finished their day’s work ahead of schedule and came home from work around three p.m.

As soon as the sun set, people came out to look for food like hungry wolves. Aside from those who secretly ate during the day, those who followed the custom piously had eyes that were almost green from starvation.

The streets were ablaze with lights and long tables that even took up whole streets. This was a free meal for the rich to give alms to the poor. It was like the kind of dinner that was served separately as the guests arrived one by one for weddings and funerals in rural China. The poor who had been hungry for a day swept away all the food on the mat in ten minutes, almost like the locusts had passed by. They could not hear anything but loud chewing and swallowing sounds and the jingling of bowls.

Ordinary people with passable financial status fought with the poor for food, but they ordered takeout or ate in restaurants. They talked to their neighbors while eating. A meal could last several hours.

Why didn’t they cook by themselves? They’d been hungry for a day, and they could smell the aroma of food coming from outside. One could spend an hour or two cooking by themselves. That was too inhumane. It was torture!

In large international cities like Cairo, it would be quiet in the daytime during Ramadan, while in other small and medium-sized cities it would almost become a ghost town. It was appropriate to shoot Hollywood blockbusters, and it didn’t even have to be cleared.

Ramadan had an impact on foreign tourists, but it was a very small impact because Ramadan was the off-season of tourism, and facilities such as restaurants that were open to foreigners would not be closed. Outdoor tourist attractions such as temples were all open as usual, but there were fewer noisy locals.

One could not forget that 10% of the Copts in Egypt didn’t have to observe the Ramadan custom. If they couldn’t find food during the day, they would go to the shops opened by the Copts. The convenience would not be affected by too much.

Zhang Zian explained the characteristics of Ramadan to the elfins, who were finding the ritual of showing devotion by torturing themselves inconceivable.

When Galaxy heard, it was very happy. This meant that it could play as much as it wanted on the empty streets.

Nevertheless, Zhang Zian planned to take advantage of today to stockpile more food.

He asked the elfins to obediently wait in the room for him to come back and then left to attend the morning meeting hosted by Wei Kang.