Ramadan Nights

"Ramadan Kareem" - Standard Ramadan Greeting 

    So, it's Ramadan in Egypt, which I am assured is better than any Ramadan that can be found in any other country.  Several Egyptians have assured me of this fact. It's definitely a different atmosphere.  The month of Ramadan requires that Muslims do not eat, drink (even water), smoke, or have sex between sunrise and sunset for a full lunar month.  In addition, a lot of people tend to try to be better Muslims during this month, giving to the poor more, being nicer to people, etc.

    The culmination of Ramadan is a feast and a party called Eid al-Fitr, but every single day the meal that breaks the fast -- called Iftaar -- is perhaps the most joyous time of day.  It happens around 6.45 right now, and so starting at 6.30 or even 6.15, the streets start to empty as people head home.  Charity tables are laid out for the poor, and every pan-handler on the street that I've seen has received a free meal from one of the local shop owners.  And it's often a good meal, too, with chicken (modest food around here tends to be vegetarian, meat comes at a premium).  It is also tradition to break fast, as Muhammad did, with dates.  For people who can't get home right away, do-gooders can be found standing by the side of the roads in any district in Cairo handing out bottles of water and bags with a few dates to hold you over until you can get to where you're going.

   My favorite store-owners and employees are filled with smiles even more than usual, and one invited me to come break the fast with them (there are many people who, as in Yemen, if they see you in a situation where they are eating and you are not, they will offer you their food before continuing... I'm pretty sure this is another Prophetic precedent, though I'd have to look it up).

   Although people are much nicer, the harassment has definitely not gone away.  Many people claim that, at least during the day, people refrain from their whistling and cat-calls.  The problems for Anya have definitely lessened, but they're still there.  And once night rolls around, and everyone is out on the streets smoking and eating with a vengeance, I'd say it's even worse.  There are things that seem to "become licit" in Ramadan nights... the women's cars on the metro, for instance, seem to have lost the magical spells that keep men out until about 10pm.  I was actually grabbed from behind while joining Anya on a women's car that was full of men.  The man earnestly explained that the car I was about to alight on was for women only.  I didn't have time to explain that there were about 25 men on board, and I wasn't going to abandon Anya to a mixed metro car during a Ramadan evening.

   Speaking of riding the metro at night (which I do more often now because most everything happens at night now), I love taking the evening metro because I can always pick up the evening edition of the Arabic language newspapers.  It's a good way to pass the time on the ride home, and it earns me a lot of appreciative-ish stares.  Reading Alaa al-Aswany or appearing to simply be "not from around here" earns me stares.  Not to mention that most upper-class/Americanized Egyptians refuse to ride the metro because it is a class marker, so the idea that foreigners would do so is at least somewhat novel, I think.

    More later...