Making my own Ramadan traditions
People have been telling me about Ramadan in Egypt for the past month and I’ve been waiting patiently but with great anticipation for the clerics to see the sliver of moon and declare the start of Ramadan. Well, it happened last weekend and Ramadan started in Egypt on Sunday.
Since I don’t know much about the traditions of Ramadan, I’ve been taking cues from people on the street and what has been told to me by fellow classmates and teachers. One such tradition is to care for those less fortunate than you. Many people give money to the mosque to pay for the dinners they provide to the public each night during the month of Ramadan. We were also told that it is polite to give money or food to those who work for you, such as your cleaning lady, your gardener, your driver, and your doorman. We only have a doorman, so we gave him and his family a bag of food bought at the local grocery store and pre-assembled especially for Ramadan. I also bought one for myself to see what was included:
The Ramadan bag contained tomato paste, pasta, rice, Lipton tea, cooking oil, some kind of oil in a jar (ghee?), sugar, and apricot paste (like a fruit roll-up but slightly less sickenly sweet). Click to read an article about Ramadan bags from the Daily Star Egypt.
The second night of Ramadan I decided to take advantage of the quiet streets during dusk and explore the outer reaches of my neighborhood. After the sun sets, the daily fast is broken with iftar, literally meaning “breakfast” in Arabic. At this time, the 94% of the population in Cairo is at home or at the mosque eating and replenishing their electrolytes.
This seems to even include bus drivers and taxi drivers. The few cars which passed me on the road where passenger cars stopping at the local bakery for sweets or hurrying on their way home. The streets were so empty that I walked across a major six-lane road, normally a reinactment of the game “Frogger,” in one smooth move without any hesitation at the dotted white lines, without sheer panic racing through me, and without doing the “I’m a total pro, this is no problem and doesn’t scare me in the least” walk-skip-run move while a truck barrelled down on me, as is usually the case.
Empty streets of Mohandiseen. Green neon lights to the left light up a mosque.
On my walk I saw groups of workers eating communal meals on the floors of office building lobbies or in the alleyways. I saw two gas station attendents standing in the road with trays in their hands, flagging down the lone taxis to give them dates. I saw hundreds of people sitting on the lawn in front of a mosque in Mohandiseen, eating the meal provided by the mosque. On side streets, I saw no one walking, no one driving, no one. The only life around me were the few cats rummaging through the garbage on the sides of the streets.
Lanterns have been set up in front of stores, in apartment building lobbies, and strung across streets.
This is the lantern which has been strung up between two buildings on our street.
On the first night of Ramadan we bought a tray full of sweet honey pasteries and shared them with a friend. Behind D and said friend, hanging from the ceiling is a brass lantern which I bought for Ramadan.
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