I made calls to Muslims to try to figure out how they would remember Eid 2020, which they will celebrate today to mark the end of a month of fasting, or Ramzan. They said their stomachs grumbled, their tongues parched, yet their discomfort was incomparable to that of people, famished and thirsty, marching out from cities brought to a standstill because of the national lockdown, imposed to check community transmission of the novel Coronavirus.

There are obvious differences between the two types of hunger. Muslims forsook food voluntarily, in adherence to their religious duty, their forbearance bolstered by the thought that iftar, or the evening meal, awaited them at sunset. The hunger of those who streamed out of cities or languished in ghettos was imposed on them by the god of power. Their suffering threatened to consume them at every turn on the burning highway.