A Qualitative Study of Ramadan in Egypt

A qualitative study across class and gender of the transient mini-verse of Ramadan in Egypt.

by Amanda Tapp

“Ramadan is an example of how humans differentiate themselves as different from any other type of being – the spiritual value you get from fasting, from understanding what it means to fast. Understanding that your mind is the one that is the controlling of your body, not the other way around.” – Ahmad, 32, freelancer.

In 2015, a study reported that there were 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, around 25% of the world’s population. During Ramadan, those that are able to fast of 25% of the world fasts (صيام“seom”) every day, from dawn until dusk, for a month.

All norms, values, and the mundane repetitiveness of everyday life are temporarily lifted during this time, and a different set of societal rules and norms are set in place. Work hours are reduced two hours, and many cafes are functioning minimally only for the few that are not fasting.

It is a time to spend with family and gatherings. Every Iftar, the breaking of the fast, which occurs just after the Maghrib (evening prayer) when the Adhan (call to prayer) occurs, echoing from every mosque throughout the city, is spent with family or friends. It is the time to see extended family, but also to spend time with the family that might not usually have time to see each other so much.

It is a month of spirituality, where the mundaneness of everyday life, in the military-industrial complex of consumerism is somewhat put aside, and a focus on being closer to God, to pray more, and to fast, not just on the physical level from food and water, but on the spiritual level.

Many will stay up into the early hours of the morning, even if they have to get up for work early in the morning as usual, to eat Suhur at pre-dawn as the last meal before the sun rises and the fasting commences.

In speaking to several Cairenes varying across age, demographic, and background, I was able to get a glimpse of how variant and vibrant Ramadan is in Egypt, and what Ramadan means for different people.

Ahmad, 32, currently working as a freelancer, said, “Ramadan is about family – Ramadan provides the opportunity to spend time with your family and have very delicious meals after Iftar. Normally, families would be visiting, while friends are busy visiting each other.”

According to Nida Mohamed, 57, who is a house-wife and NGO director, her favourite part of Ramadan is what it means for family.

“When the kids started going to university, we don’t have the time to sit together at the same table for dinner, except during Ramadan. And we do parties in Ramadan to invite our friends and families during different days. When you feed someone in Ramadan, you are doing a virtue, so we invite so many people and we are invited to so many of our friends and families’ houses because it’s good to feed other people in Islam.”

During Iftar, each person breaks their fast differently. Some with dates and milk, to ease their stomachs into it. Others will immediately have a long-awaited for cigarette and coffee.

The Spirituality of Ramadan

Ramadan, while a cultural phenomenon, is of course, deeply spiritual. There are three levels of fasting, although not everyone engages in all three.

“You have, the fasting of the belly, which is the most famous one people know about, which is not eating and not drinking,” Ahmad said.

He goes on to say, “You have another level, seom aljawaarih (fasting of the instincts). All your human instincts, you inhibit consciously – so no gossiping, no listening to anything that is considered unlawful, you don’t use your hands or feet to do bad things, so you don’t hit people, no marital relations, etc.”

These are the two fundamental levels, with one extra level:

“Seom al Kalb, fasting of the heart, where people are constantly contemplating and exalting Allah during this month […] their heart is in a state where there’s no room for anything else.”

When asked what makes Ramadan so special, Ahmad replied:

“People are willing to do anything for any else, even prostate, but never go thirsty for someone else. So that’s what makes fasting special, it’s the one thing you do to God […] this is the only type of worship that is done only to him, you’ll never see that kind of worship done to anyone else. Apart from also understanding that your mind is the one that is the controlling of your body, not the other way around. It should not be the other way around. Otherwise you’d be no different from a cow, or any type of creature that instinctively follows their instincts. This is an example of how humans differentiate themselves as different from any other type of being. This is the spiritual value you get from fasting. From understanding what it means to fast.”

According to Nagla Fathi, 41, who works as a cleaner:

“Everything is beautiful in this month.”

I talked to Zeina, 25, about the spirituality of Ramadan for her.

When I asked her, “Does Ramadan bring you closer to God?”

Her response was, “I already feel so close to God. I think I have a special relationship with God. A lot of people don’t excel or do their best but they focus on the traditions, the headscarves; but they’re not honest, so I feel like my relationship with God is good because I’m good to other people, I don’t harm, I’m good to others – I’m not a bad person, I just am not doing the rituals that other people will define if you are a good Muslim or not. And I’ve seen this a lot, people pretending they are better Muslims than us, doing all the prayers, extra fasting throughout the year – not just during Ramadan – and they will give you this look as if to say,

‘Do you think you’re better than me?’”

For Nida, her thoughts on Ramadan have changed throughout her life.

“Growing older, we have to make more effort with God, because when you become old, you think that your end is coming soon, so you want to please God more. So, I pray more during Ramadan when I’m older. Everything – when you are old – you do everything in a calm way. When you are older, you have all the time to focus on being close with God because you are thinking of your end more. I pray to God, that I want God to take me before I become a burden or lose my health.”

Ramadan, for some, may provide some form of a metric. I spoke to Ahmad about how Ramadan may help one better oneself.

“I look forward to next Ramadan being better for me. I will be able to recite the Quran more, rather than partially, but entirely. Every Ramadan you hope to be a better Muslim, because Ramadan is supposed to be like boot camp – summer camp – it’s one way of using a metric to compare yourself – was I a better Muslim this Ramadan compared to last Ramadan? […] Ramadan is your chance to repent,” said Ahmad.

I asked Ahmed, “take me through a typical day in Ramadan.”

Ahmad: “I miss when I was younger, Ramadan used to be in the winters, so fasting used to be easier. I remember, our parents, they didn’t pressure us into fasting, but I used to do it because I wanted to, I wanted to show them ‘no, I can do it! I can take it!” I think I was 6 or 7, full swing. I was very passionate. It’s usually the same feeling, usually when you wake up, you want to drink water, but in Ramadan you know that’s not a possibility, so you wake up, you use the bathroom, do the normal stuff, then you just, go about your day, you spend your day, you can read, sometimes Quran or recitations, sometimes I’ll watch religious sermon or a khutbah (Islamic scholars’ shows) and some of them were very famous and used to be televised on national television. In Ramadan there’s always the chance to do these activities that involve seeking knowledge that is beneficial. The knowledge you seek has to be beneficial, it has to be knowledge you can act upon, because knowledge you can’t act upon is pretty much useless, so learning about the religion is the best kind of knowledge.”

For Zeina, Ramadan gives her a strength that only comes to her during the Holy month.

“There is no morning routine, you don’t have your midday snack, and you still wake up early to work, so it’s a bit different. You feel like God is with you, God is giving you strength, and God is helping you. I can never fast off-Ramadan. I can’t imagine going through a day without my morning coffee or breakfast, I will feel sick, but during Ramadan, it’s OK. It’s motivation, you have a very powerful reason during Ramadan, because it’s very spiritual – because God will fulfil your prayers.”

Prayers are more emphasised and focused on by many during Ramadan.

Mohamed Bahnasi, teller, age 33,discussed the Tarawih (the prayer performed after the Isha prayer during Ramadan), “which brings the servant closer to Allah and makes him quick to obtain his satisfaction and love, as well as provides an atmosphere of safety for him.”

As Ahmad said,

“It’s the long prayer, it’s voluntary, it’s not mandatory, and it’s done in 2’s, two raka’ats (ركعات, a single unit of Islamic prayer) – two raka’at, two raka’at, for a total of 8 or 20. This is the prayer that usually recites all throughout the Quran, so the mosques will usually recite parts of the Quran throughout the whole month and finish it, during this month. Khatam al-Quran (خاتمہ, a recitation of the Quran) from beginning to end. Every month, in every mosque, in every Muslim nation, it will happen. Here, it will happen too. I remember being in a mosque before the pandemic, it was always fulfilling.”

Ramadan is also a time of giving, of charity. In Islam, it is known as zakat, payment made under Islamic law for charitable purposes, and is also one of the five pillars of Islam. In Ramadan, donations are given to those in need, often times through a well-known charity.

Charity tables are quite prevalent in poorer parts of the cities in Egypt during Ramadan. Long, stretched out tables are ladled with foods set in the street, and it is welcome for anyone to come eat. It is not a place for questions, but a place to give, eat, and gather. It is meant to be for the needy. These are called “mawaeed al-rahman” (tables of mercy). This practice may be said to stem from the belief of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings, whereby providing for a fasting person to break their fast will result in a spiritual reward.

The Uniqueness of Ramadan in Egypt

When asked, “what do you think makes Ramadan unique in Egypt?” the answers I received were widely variant. Hamada, 31, proudly discussed Egypt’s many Ramadan traditions.

“The traditions. Other cultures don’t have as traditions as deep, or as many. If you ask me about Saudi’s traditions, I know they eat dates and milk to break the fast, but that’s about it. If you ask any other Muslim from the Muslim world about Egyptian Ramadan, they’ll tell you about the lanterns, about the songs, about the TV shows, about the decorations.”

Egypt is well known for its abundance of memorable and beautiful traditions for Ramadan.

With the exception of the quarantine and lockdown during COVID-19 this year, usually, the thing to look forward to the most for Nida is “going out every day to cafes, for suhoor – being with other people all the time.”

Bahnasi believes that what makes Ramadan unique in Egypt is Al-Kadr night (“night of power”), “which is considered by Allah to be better than a thousand months, where the angels descend on the ground and open the doors of heaven for the needy and those who seek Allah’s satisfaction.”

In Egypt there is a strong and almost tangible, palpable, Ramadan atmosphere – “the use of fabrics, decorations, use of lights – if you go to rural areas, entire areas can use one table to eat together,” says Ahmad.

“Social bonds are stronger in rural areas – entire neighborhoods are completely decorated and they will eat together,” Ahmad continues to say. Women on their periods, pregnant, elderly and sickly are not expected to fast. “Sharing Iftar with families is in all Arab nations, and making special dishes, but the things that are really unique to Egypt, to my knowledge, are the Iftar canon, fanoos Ramadan, and the history of the TV shows and all this content that Egypt produced throughout the 90s and 80s.”

He goes on to say, “in Egypt, the TV shows are always all produced in Ramadan, and in Eid, all the new movies come out, so the entertainment is actually centered around Ramadan.”

Although the advertisements are many, with sometimes the show time less than the advertisement time, the shows are widely popular and looked forward to throughout the year. Iftar is usually eaten in front of the TV, as across the most densely populated Arab country, millions sit in front of the TV and watch the Ramadan-time shows with the most famous actors and break their fast together. During this time, Muslim all across the Muslim world, will be glue to the television screens as they watch the Egyptian TV shows.

Ahmad reminisces about the Ramadan TV shows during his childhood, and how they often were educational.

“It’s a chance to learn more about their religion. So we can learn more about worship-related issues, history, Quran, stories of the prophets […] there was a very famous Egyptian show that portrayed the stories of the many prophets – Abrahim, Moses, Mohamed, Jesus, David, Solomon.”

Fanoos (فانوس lantern), is one of the most well-known and beloved, vibrant traditions of Ramadan in Egypt. For Zeina, it is the first thing she thinks of when she hears the word “Ramadan.” She would enjoy receiving her new fanoos with her neighborhood friends as a child.

“We would get our brand new fawanees (plural of “fanoos”) that our parents got for us, and we’d go inside the garage and sing the Ramadan songs, and light up the fawanees and go into the dark place and see which one is prettier. Maybe from age 7 until 13 or so.

I asked Zeina, “Would your parents buy you a fanoos, or make you one, or would you go with them to get one?”

To which she replied, “Well, Ramadan changes each year, so when I was younger, it was during school time, more during winter, so we’d make ones at school out of paper and I’d love them and I’d try to make them again at home. But my father, because he used to work in stationary, so every year he made brother and I a new one every year. Actually, I remember, every year, the fawanees would become less beautiful as they became more commercialized. But there was one fanoos I really, really love, and if I find it again I’m sure I am going to buy it.”

I asked her, “What was it?”

She replied, “It was gold and it had coloured glass. It looked like a typical fanoos but it was made out of plastic. It had chains with beautiful small trinkets hanging from it and when you press the button it would revolve around it around the fanoos. And it could play a song that every Egyptian will know, ‘Ramadan gaiiina’ (Ramadan is coming).”

Ramadan is also a time of consuming certain kinds of foods, most of which were reserved particularly for the holy month of Ramadan. According to Ahmad, “There’s special foods amar al-deen (dried apricot juice), it’s Egyptian, and there’s this whole collection of desserts and things that usually come out in Ramadan only. Home-cooked meals become a thing.”

Other popular Ramadan dishes include duck, Molokheya (Egyptian spinach) and Mahshi (stuffed vegetables). Soups are also a popular way to break fast.

One must not forget the deserts – Baklava and Qattayif (“wings of the bird”- due to the way they look), which are pancakes filled with cheese or nuts then soaked in syrup, Konafa, Basboosa, and many more. There is an abundance of sweets available to consume during the month. Pastry and bread shops will have a complete new set of things they sell – all centered around Ramadan sweets. For drinks, many enjoy Karkadey (hibiscus), Erq Sous (licorice), Tamr Hini (tamarind), Humous (chick pea drink) are popular.

After the month of Ramadan, comes Eid al-Fitr, the festival of Breaking the Fast. Eid is a the largest holiday of Muslims, celebrating and marking the end of the month-long fasting of Ramadan.

“Eid, for me, as a child, meant getting a new outfit, and waking up very early to do the Eid prayers, then after that, either go to the cinema in the morning, then eat ringa and touna (which you can’t have during Ramadan as they’re quite salty) and then – the hero of desserts, the mayor of presentation of Eid – Kahk al-Eid,” Zeina said.

For Roya Hassan, 33, teacher,

“The best thing about Eid is that you wake up in the morning and have Kahk, in the morning, and have tea with milk or coffee. Some mosques throw balloons into the air, and we go to Sawlaat Eid.” Eid Salat is the Eid congregational prayer.

For Yehia Maddah, just 9 years old, this is his first Ramadan fasting.

Children often will begin to do smaller version of a full day of fasting for the first year they fast, perhaps 4 hours or so, when they are young, but most will start fasting properly, from dawn until dusk, anywhere from the age of 9 until 13.

For Yehia, he is really looking forward to Eid, which occurs after the month-long Ramadan with two fixed days of festivities and nation-wide shutting down of work, school and universities, but in particular, one sweet – Kahk.

As the lanterns of different colours light up the streets, adorning the houses and cafes, Ramadan songs heard from radios and from people’s homes and cafes, millions focus on praying, on showing love to God and to one another, on charity and goodness, fasting from dawn until dusk, enjoying the breaking of the fast together in front of the television shows that have been long-awaited for the year, consuming particular foods, desserts and drinks special to the Holy month – one can almost feel the spirit of Ramadan coursing through the air, enveloping the streets of Cairo.

The Nausea: Seeking Refuge

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I knew I was looking for something, but I didn’t know what. I had decided to hike Gabal Mousa (Mount Moses aka Mount Sinai) alone, with a Bedouin mountain guide, several months before I finally went in the beginning of November, 2020. In October 2020 I had to first renew my tourist visa in order to be able to travel within Egypt. Following that, I began doing my research.

I knew I wouldn’t go with a group due to my anxiety, and because I was hoping for it to be a more personal, thought-provoking experiencing. It was.

I definitely over-prepared for this hike. I’ve only done about 3 or so hikes in my life, two of them barely counted (one in Edinburgh city and one I had a migraine and had to stop halfway), and so I was incredibly nervous for this one. Living in Cairo, where it doesn’t go below 10 degrees in winter, all my coldest winter clothes are in Shanghai, China, in the house that I grew up in. I also didn’t have hiking gear. After skirting off to multiple trips to sports stores around Cairo, I finally got everything I needed.

I was staying in Dahab, a city two hours away from the mountain, notorious for its diving and the Blue Hole. The city where Gabal Moussa is located in is called Saint Catherine’s, but it was already quite cold when I went in the beginning of November, around 4-15 degrees each day.

I had a contact for a mountain guide recommended to me from a friend, who was a Bedouin who did mountain hikes for individuals and groups alike. His name was Mousa (the name Muslims gave to Moses), which I thought was rather fitting, given the name and history of the mountain, which is where Moses talked to God and is said to have received the 10 commandments.

I had over-prepared and agonised over every detail of this hike, but the one thing I did not account for were my migraines. I suffer from chronic migraines since I was 16 or so. When they’re bad, I begin to feel nauseous, and can vomit if I have no medication. That evening, I had planned to sleep from 6-10PM, to get some hours in, before getting ready to be picked up by Mousa and drive to the mountain. Of course, with the pre-hike adrenaline, I slept about 2 hours or less. On top of that, I was dehydrated from spending the day in the sun in Dahab. Looking back, it wasn’t surprising I got a migraine.The migraine began around 7PM. I immediately took one of my pills. 95% of the time they work for me. The 5% it doesn’t, I take another a few hours later and it works.

Mousa came to pick me up from Dahab at 10.30PM with his friend Mohamed, who was also a Bedouin, and we sailed through the mountains to Saint Catherine’s. Dahab was rather warm, in the lower 20’s, but as we drove onward, the windows slowly felt more and more cold, as I tentatively pressed my fingers on them, and I gradually put on more and more layers in the backseat of the car. The moon was particularly bright that day, like God’s flashlight, and the world was His stage. Nothing would go unseen. I watched the black mountain shapes go past us in the car, as their Khaliji music lulled in the background.

At around 12:30AM, a bit after midnight, we arrived at the foot of the mountain. Many hooded figures came to greet me – all in large cloaks. I peered up at them from the inside of the car, excited and terrified. They reminded me of cloaked figures from Lord of the Rings. There were about 10-15 of them, huddled and hunched under their cloaks, some holding hot cups of tea. They were individual guides for any travelers that needed them.

In the car, I still had the migraine, and I began to feel nauseous, so I took a second pill and ate a protein bar in preparation for the hike. However, the Nausea persisted. I looked up the moon and wondered why, of all days, I was having such a bad migraine this day, that wasn’t going away even with the pills, and coupled with nausea (which didn’t occur most of the time for me in recent years).

At the foot of the mountain, I informed Mousa rather anxiously that I felt very sick and wasn’t sure what to do. He looked at me and asked if perhaps hot water and lemon would help. I said it might. There was a small “shop” – really a wooden ledge on a wall with a hot water faucet tank, some plastic cups, some boxes of tea, and – miraculously – lemons. I sipped the water and lemon slowly. Granted, it was incredibly sour, and I sipped it while showing this on my face.

I was surprised that the Nausea seemed to have left me alone once I had finished it. And like that, we began the hike. I had brought a hiking flashlight that one straps to their head – although I held it in my hand due to embarrassment – just to put it away fairly quickly as I realised that the moon lit up the ground for us to walk perfectly well. The moon and stars guided us, the mountains cocooned us, and welcomed us. Every now and then a camel would saunter by us, slowly and grandly, majestically, always accompanied by a Bedouin walking steadily in front, holding on to their reins.

Before a few minutes had passed, the Nausea returned. This nausea, it turned out, was to accompany me for this journey and be the defining point of the hike. I kept on hiking, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, as much as I could, before I’d have to sit down as the Nausea took over. Each time I sat on a rock, the Nausea lulled and dissipated, but as I stood up and began to put one foot in front of another again, it returned.

I felt disappointment, anger – at the situation, at myself. I perceived it to be a sign of weakness. Mousa walked alongside me, and after a couple hours helped me carry my backpack on his chest, with his own backpack on his back, and offered me his arm to lean on. I asked him to tell me stories about the Bedouins, about his tribe, and he did.

As we walked and I fought the Nausea, breathing heavily – the type of laboured breath that precedes vomiting more so than from hiking – he told me a folk story of the Bedouins. He told me, a long time ago – this doesn’t really happen now anymore, he said – if a Bedouin man wants to ask a Bedouin woman to marry him and he sees her with cattle or such from afar, he would place his foot on a large rock, and with another rock, carve out the outline of his foot onto the rock. That way, when she sees that rock, she would know that he wants to marry her, and if she accepted it, she would do the same with her foot next to his on the same large rock. Once they married, they would carve a circle around both of the outlines of their feet on that rock to signify their unity.

There were several lodges on the way up. Each time I rested, it was a cost-benefit analysis for me – stop, and lose body heat rapidly, but no longer feel nauseous – or keep on walking to no longer feel cold, but feel nauseous? As a result, we didn’t pause much at each lodge, nor each time we sat, but I kept on sitting down rather frequently on rocks that lined the hiking path.

At one point, when I looked up, I noticed a perfect circle around the moon – quite far from it, it seemed – bright and white. I was stunned. As a city girl, I’d never seen anything like it before. I asked Mousa what it was – he said he didn’t know the name for it but he had seen it before. It looked like a dragon’s eye. It was a perfect circle surrounding the moon. I later found out it was a moon halo – a rare phenomenon which Aristotle wrote about. It forms in a perfect 22 degrees around the moon due to the moonlight that is refracted in millions of ice particles in the atmosphere.

The lodges were really wooden shacks, with a few Bedouins inside, huddled in many layers of blankets – they must stay like that day after day – it must be very hard for them, I remember thinking. At each lodge, were some tourists who were resting, each huddled, quiet, cold, miserable. Usually the ones who couldn’t continue anymore. There you could have hot tea or coffee or just water, or purchase some very simple snacks. Each lodge was adjourned by bright white hanging lightbulbs which pierced my eyes and angered my migraines, so I couldn’t stay for more than a few minutes at each one.

In one such lodge, three women were huddled together, sharing blankets and rugs. One of them, a very elderly lady, was falling asleep in a rug-like cloak. I was a little worried for her, but she was well taken care of by the other girls and the Bedouins. The Bedouin taking care of that lodge was lying down covered by his rugs on one of the ledges. We all sat there silently, recovering, slowly losing body heat, when another Bedouin came in. I was shocked to see he was wearing sandals! It was 5 degrees at that point. He didn’t seem cold at all.

How versatile the human body is – someone like me, who was wearing 2 pairs of socks and when sitting down rapidly lost heat in my feet and hands first and hiking shoes, with sensitive, non-calloused skin, versus someone like him, who’s skin wouldn’t even feel the same as mine, and who can withstand the cold with bare feet at 5 degrees and not feel it.

By that point, a few hours in, the Nausea was progressively getting worse. I was having to stop and sit down more and more frequently, my breath becoming more laboured with every step. I felt like I couldn’t continue much longer. We were so close, Mousa told me. We were almost at the 750 steps, which was the last part, although the hardest part – harder than the hike we had done so far.

Right as he told me this, we saw a dark lodge – no pain-inducing lights, no people sitting there, no noise, dark and abandoned. I sat on the ledge outside and leaned forward, breathing very loudly by this point. Suddenly, I felt like I was finally going to vomit.

I stumbled around the back of the lodge, as far as I could, before collapsing and eliminating the poison that had been wanting to be emitted from my body for the entire journey thus far. I leaned, with my right hand on a rock on the ground, squatting, my body convulsing.

I knew, then, in that moment, that I wouldn’t be able to go up the entire way. I felt colder almost immediately after, much weaker, and – above all – psychologically I felt the impact of the dehydration due to vomiting on my body in terms of my body temperature and energy – particularly after a 5 hour hike in the cold mountain.

Seeing I was feeling utterly defeated, Mousa told me, gently, that I shouldn’t push myself, and that we could watch the sunrise from where we were, as we were already quite high up. Life doesn’t work the way you plan it to.

Miraculously, there were rugs inside the abandoned lodge, which seemed like no one had been in for months. I was incredibly cold by that point, as we hadn’t been moving for awhile now, and feeling very weak that I couldn’t even think much. All I could think about was how I was going to survive the cold until the sun came up. My feet were slowly becoming numb. I couldn’t wait to feel the sun warm up our small part of the planet and feel the sun’s warmth on my cheeks.

We rested outside the lodge, waiting for the sunrise. The first glimpse was a calming blue that lit up the sky from the previous black. Suddenly feeling energised, I sat up and got excited. We moved from the lodge to the edge of the mountain, finding a perfect spot facing the mountain, and set up the rugs there. The first colours of the sun filled the sky with a brilliant orange-red. I felt as though I was witnessing the beginning of the earth, leaving the womb of the universe into its own.

Slowly the colours in the sky changed, spoiling us, and all of the minuscule human beings in that mountain. I could hear nothing for miles. It felt, for a moment, as though there was only the sun, the sky, the painted vibrant colours, the mountain, and me.

Looking back after, I realised I was quite lucky to get a “private” sunrise – the top would have been populated with tourists who preferred the sounds of their violently loud pop music playing arrogantly for all around them to hear, rather than the more subtle sounds of nature.

Mousa suggested I sleep for 15 minutes to get some rest, and I immediately agreed. Cocooned between two rugs, I laid my head on my hiking backpack, pulling my beanie down to cover my nose and the rug up to the tip of my nose, and just like that, with the sun kissing me gently through the beanie, I fell instantly into a deep sleep. I slept like that, exhausted, overwhelmed, joyful, ecstatic, parallel to the sun in the heavens. As the alarm went off, the sound jarring against the peaceful symphony of nature, I wondered, briefly, what Moses said to God.

At about 8 AM, we began our hike down. I had tentatively eaten a banana and a small amount of water after the sunrise for fear of vomiting again but also knowing my body needed sustenance. The hike down was infinitely easier, although by that point my legs were shaking – we made it down in 2 hours with only 2 short rests.

Without the heavy laboured breath induced by nausea, I was able to talk more freely and enjoy the hike down, and in particular – the views. It seemed as though, at some point in the night, someone had taken us and placed us on an entirely different mountain from the one we went up during the night.

At the bottom, Mousa’s friend Mohamed was waiting for us, ready to greet us. It was a relief to see a familiar face- albeit one that I had only known from the day before. We drove into Saint Catherine’s into a small “restaurant” – which was really just a man who could make some very simple eggs and tea, coffee, etc., with 4 or 5 tables and stools placed around. We changed into our “normal day” clothes, and I felt the effect of the mountain dripping off of me slowly.

As I was moving towards a table to claim it, so did a tall girl with stark red hair. I apologised and motioned for her to take it. She said, “no, let’s both sit here!”

Not knowing what to do, I perched on the edge of the stool, and smiled at her. She smiled back.

“So, what are you doing in Saint Catherine’s?” she asked. That was all it took for me to completely open up to her and spill out the story of the last few hours. She was very kind and told me I had completed the hike, even to the point of physical exertion where I vomited. I warned her of the cold and the physical challenge that Mount Moses presented. She laughed and told me she didn’t have many winter clothes, as she had originally decided to take a 1 week trip to Dahab and had now been there for 1 month. Her and her friends had come into Saint Catherine’s that night and were to hike the mountain that night.

Soon enough, Mousa and his friend came and joined us. After we all ate balady (local/Egyptian) bread and eggs with some cucumbers and tomatoes with our allotted teas and coffees, we said goodbye to her and headed back to the car for our drive back to Dahab.

The mountains that I saw looming over us as we drove back looked familiar to me from the night before, smiling down at me (proudly?) in the broad light of day. At one point, as the mountains began to disappear, I felt a strange pang in my heart when I realised that I was leaving the mountains behind, for God knows how long. I slept in the back, exhausted but happy. When I woke up, I saw the sea in the distance and the hubbub of Dahab nearing.

This time, I felt a panicky feeling in my gut as I realised I was entering another city, or town, filled with people – the pure opposite of nature. Having been brought up as a city girl and living in Cairo, a city with 24 million people and the most densely populated city in the Arab world, I felt a sudden fear and sadness for what I knew would come – many moments of nostalgia for those mountains.

I bid Mousa and Mohamed a heartfelt goodbye, saying bye to Mohamed in my broken Arabic, and went up to the Airbnb I was staying in. As I closed the door behind me, almost before the door had closed, my body was consumed by uncontrollable sobbing, as I felt my face contort up in a horrible way and fat, ugly tears roll miserably my cheeks.

I collapsed on the floor, just like that, and cried my heart out. I hadn’t cried like that in awhile. I was afraid and shocked at how I was crying – I didn’t know why, nor was there one particular reason. It was a combination of everything – the exhaustion, being overwhelmed, the relief of this hike that was lifted off of my shoulders that I had been planning and preparing for months, the question of “so what now?” loomed over me, the memories and warmth I received from that journey, a gut-wrenching sadness that it was over, and also a feeling of incredible loneliness, all in the same split second.

People have always asked me why I am in Egypt, what brought me here – I am welcomed with a look of curiosity as people ask me here and abroad why I chose to live in Egypt, to which I always struggled to find an answer to. The answer is complicated and multidimensional, but in that moment, the answer came to me simply – I was seeking refuge.

Refuge away from the hubbub of modernity and individualism, the many headed monster that had almost completely consumed cities in developed countries, and refuge towards the feeling of authenticity, inspirational interactions, love, and community, that is everywhere I look in Egypt.

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An Ode to Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”

The Poor Poet

Virginia Woolf had written about women needing space and the means to think and create. This means the time and resources, in order not to have to work – nor be obliged to be a housewife, and be able to have the time needed to create.

For a man, it is different, he is, in many ways, born with the world laid down before his feet.

Of course, I must take into account Virginia Woolf’s positionality, a white woman during the early 20^th century. The intersectionality of this gendered realisation largely neglects race and class, however, the point holds true nonetheless. A black woman will find it harder to have the time and space to create than her male counterpart, while an upper-class woman would similarly have more societal obligations and roles dictated by society that are not forgiving to her own needs and wants, than her male counterpart.

“The poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog’s chance… a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born.”
“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

I now have my own space. A charming, unique little flat with its own feel, I realised living in one’s own place – to curate a relationship with it, is to care for it, and it, in turn, will take care of you. I can’t help think longingly about the day I have my real own place, a place under my own name, not paying rent to anyone else, where I can design the walls, the bedrooms, the structures, the stairs.

Why is it so much easier to prioritise the everyday chores, the societal obligations – to see this and that person, to pick this and that up, to run this and that errand – rather than the things the heart wants, the yearning to create? Although, the yearning for love, acceptance, companionship are also things the heart wants.

I suppose life is a long journey to find the balance, or perhaps it is an everlasting dance between the two. To create, to leave one’s impact, to be the best one can be – in whatever it is one deems important, and then the other. Yet for others it seems people are content with the latter, without the aspect of creating. There is no real need to create, they are satisfied with supporting themselves and their family, being a good person, having a stable life not having to worry about resources, and a stable job.

Then there are the rest of us, the creator-yearners, perhaps, I should name us.

The struggles of the creator-yearners are seldom understood and are inevitably rare in their individuality.

I have to water myself, my own needs, my own yearnings, my need to create, and to prioritise them, because society won’t.

I hope this little flat will give to me what I want to give to it – what it needs. When I moved in, the pipes were leaking, only a screw was sticking out of where the doorknob should have been, lightbulbs were missing, the kitchen had parts caked in dust and soot, dust covering entire parts of the place – it hadn’t been cared for.

“Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry.”
“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

I am privileged to have these material things needed, but one must take care of them.

To have this, as such a young age, is undoubtedly a privilege, a privilege that many women lack. Once this room of one’s own is attained, there is no excuse, there is nothing standing in the way.

Instead, there is the fear, that my very need and want to create, my very yearning, will be my demise. Just as Sisyphus carried that meaningless rock up that hill, day after day, meaninglessly, he gave meaning to his life, but what if I am unable to carry my rock up every day, as it seems meaningless, more often than not? In the end, I may crumble from this pressure, this self-driven pressure and expectation to truly be someone.

And yet, in the face of the Strangeness of the Universe,

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

I don’t want to be Woolf’s imagined Shakespeare’s sister – Woolf’s genius literary device of a metaphorical woman, imagined, as Shakespeare’s sister – who was equally as talented as William Shakespeare himself, but, alas, will amount to nothing, forgotten in the dust of history,

“…it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. […] She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers.”
“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

Judith, never stood a chance.

“For genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is not born today among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom?”
“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

Woolf wrote this in 1929, almost 100 years ago. Although certain things have changed, technology has progressed, the geo-political nature of international relations has shifted, pandemics have come and gone, climate change has worsened, yet the very difference of societal obligations and its treatment of women still remain, in its core essence.

Since we are little girls, we are held more tightly and bound more strictly to societal’s expectations as a daughter, as a sister, and later on, as a wife, as a mother; our own personal desires held to a lesser degree of importance than those of men.

To be a woman, in a man’s world, is a hardship unique to women throughout the centuries. To have a room of one’s own, is a privilege indeed, one that those of us lucky to have must make good use of.

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Will you?

Will you?

Will you grow, evolve, and transgress

past the endless societal obligations

like the boundless waves of a sea

and transgress, into eternity?

past what our mothers and fathers have drilled into our heads

our heads that were once

filled with play-things, toys and pacifiers

we replaced these with books, games and school

then with bullying, jealousy, and mimicking’s of

what we thought was love

mimicked from the screens that follow us

wherever we go

replaced by drinks of solitude

cigarettes of despair

numb our chattering minds

chattering away the mumuring, “grow, evolve and transgress”

replaced by what they call “adulthood”

and solitude in the most crowded of places

will you transgress beyond these?

transgress beyond all these societal hands, molding us

beautiful shifting, shapeless, figures –

of which we were molded to fit into

since the idea of the creation of us was first transmitted

from neuron to neuron

in someone’s brain?

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Deciding to stay in Egypt during COVID-19 as a Chinese-British Woman

COVID-19: The unasked for mirror of humanity and the individual.

On Monday March 16th, Egypt announced it would close all the airports for two weeks. As a 24-year-old British-Chinese UK citizen, I decided to stay in Egypt during the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic is a testament to humanity and the unasked-for mirror of ourselves.

When remnants of the coronavirus began circulating world-wide, I began feeling a bit self-conscious, or perhaps paranoid doing my grocery shopping or walking on the streets- were people looking at me differently? I prepared myself for going into work the next day.

Being born to a British father and Chinese mother, and being an outsider seen as different with an assortment of ranging perceptions in different countries, is what I have been dealing with my entire life. My identity is what other people perceive me as.

Uber drivers would ask me “Corona?” and I would feel insulted, but, afraid of any repudiation, hurriedly replied back in Egyptian Arabic, “la, ma3ndish Corona” (“I do not have Corona”). It wasn’t necessarily meant to inflict harm, but it was harmful- to perpetuate this idea that not even just Chinese people, but those remotely resembling what their perception was of the Chinese race, are a direct cause of the Coronavirus and therefore able to be blamed and have anger projected upon.

Thoughts such as, “Was that a hint of fear and suspicion in her eyes?” began running through my head. I did get the odd joke, “Hey, stop eating rats”, general coughing in my direction, or complete exaggerated horror and repulsion if I happened to cough.

Worried about my mother, who is widowed and lives alone in Shanghai, and who had been self-quarantined at home as the entire country shut down for over two months, I held all these fears to myself.

Having grown up with Chinese as my second language, going to international schools with all expats for the 8 years I lived in Shanghai, I never felt very close to my motherland. At age 11 I moved to China for the first time in my life with my parents, to complete middle and highschool before I was to leave for University in California. I have been through shameful years of my life where I was arrogant as being half-British and as being perceived as a foreigner in China, feeling a disconnect to the Chinese people and China as a country.

I was entirely disconnected from my motherland’s history, culture, people, economy, politics, government- until I hit the age of 20 when my father passed away within the span of 4 months from a very rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I underwent transformations since then and am still undergoing them, including having more awareness for societal issues, and having an increased awareness for my lack of connection with my motherland. However, despite this change, I never felt such a connection to the Chinese people, my Chinese side, and the country itself until now.

While the rest of the world carried on, without much sympathy or sorrow for what the Chinese people were going through, I worried and held it in my heart. Not only was I hurting for what the Chinese people were going through, but all Chinese immigrants all over the world. I began hearing stories from ethnically Chinese friends in different countries, seeing occurrences on social media, and I dealt with the odd racist comment myself.

One South-East Asian woman here in Cairo said to me one day,

“I’m sorry, but I hate the word Chinese now.”

I was shocked but covered it quickly,

Why? I asked calmly, while attempting to smile.

“Because, me and my friends, everyone thinks we are Chinese, and the places we live is not so good, you know, and people laugh at us, and tell us to get off the bus if one of us is coughing- they make us feel threatened all the time now.”

A few weeks into the lockdown, I was taking an uber and the driver asked me, “anta feen?” (where are you from). I usually said, “I’m British and Chinese.” This time, instinctively, almost without thinking, I said, “I’m British.” He gave me a glance in the mirror but I knew if I said I was also Chinese it would jumpstart an entire conversation I most likely wouldn’t want to have.

Yet, we must appreciate that there is a retaliation against the discrimination and the seemingly innate selfishness inside all of us. After the video of a Chinese man being kicked out of an Uber in Cairo, and filmed and leered at by other passerby’s and unable to get another car, a post began circulating around the Egyptian online communities condemning the way this man was treated and showing solitude with this man:

“عندما تنظر للآسيويين على أنهم “فيروس كورونا”، فلا تستعجب عندما ينظر لك أحدهم على أنك “إرهابي”!

When you consider Asians as “Corona virus”, don’t be surprised when someone considers you as a “Terrorist”!

#لا_للعنصرية
# No_to_racism

And so, during the month of March, the country began to both prepare for and respond to the quickly escalating pandemic. I felt a wave of comradeship, one of that I’ve never felt before- of an entire country going through a struggle, collectively, at one time. Although I am not Egyptian, I feel as though I am part of the struggle here. I have been and will continue to go through all of the steps with my fellow Egyptians.

We often imprison ourselves in certain enclosed areas for weeks on end- from home, a grocery store, a bar, our workplace- but we never feel as though it is prison, until you are told you cannot leave it. The moment the government announced the airport will be closed for two weeks and there will be no incoming or outgoing flights, I felt trapped. The British Embassy line was jammed that entire night. The next day was surreal, as I was running around frantically asking the foreigners I know here if they were leaving, it seemed about 60-40; most had managed to book flights, some through connections they had, and a few were staying.

I knew the flights would be booked up fairly soon, but I didn’t jump on my computer to go on and try to book one. Why did I choose to stay? I suppose, because of the people and the feeling of camaraderie in Egypt. April 12th was the last repatriation flight for British citizens from Egypt. I spoke to the British Embassy on the phone at long last, but decided, once more, to stay, and not to leave.

In the past few weeks, stories of the revolution have resurfaced. Gossip and pondering of whether or not there will be a curfew implemented, similarly to the one that was imposed during the Arab Spring 9 years ago. Stories of what the curfew was like, events cancelled, what it was like to spend all the time indoors.

A son, who, injured in the revolution, was in the hospital, and his mother feigned illness to pass through the military blocks implemented during the curfew. A woman giving birth during the revolution. A child born in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, in the smoke of revolution.

An Egyptian friend frankly told me upon a conversation regarding the rapid escalation of the pandemic in an effort to calm me down,

“Egypt will survive. We are still struggling from the revolution, our economy is still struggling, we are still clawing ourselves up out of the hole of poverty. We will not let ourselves fall to this virus, simply because we cannot afford to.”

As another Egyptian friend told me,

“Egyptians are like cockroaches. Did you know, Egypt is the only country that was never entirely rebuilt?”

Those around me, almost all have blind faith in the authority to implement the necessary actions and to make the right decisions in an effective and timely manner.

These conversations brought me back a few months ago, when someone said to me,

“You are not Egyptian, but you know why you love Egypt. Me, I’m Egyptian, and I have no idea why I love my country. I just know I do.”

The Egyptian government has, thus far, taken many pre-emptive measures, even being praised by the World Health Organization. On Thursday March 19th, the Egyptian Cabinet announced a partial curfew being implemented, with most shops being closed by 7pm everyday, with the exception of necessary services like pharmacies, hospitals, supermarkets, and home-delivery services. On Tuesday March 24th, the Egyptian Government announced in addition, all shops and malls will be closed during the weekends (Friday and Saturday) with additional curfew implementations.

To be a part of something with so many people is surely overwhelming. This is what I see all people doing throughout or lives and all the people that came before us- to build something greater than themselves, whether it is a legacy in a career, through art, through family, etc. To be part of something greater than ourselves.

COVID-19 acts as the unasked for mirror, reflecting our inner fears, thoughts, and inhumanity as individuals and as a species. The reflections are infinitely complex, both beautiful and daunting. There is a pool of disappointment and empathy felt for the hardships people are undergoing now, but this pool is contrasted by a glow of admiration and gratitude towards the retaliation of discrimination, the global solidarity through social media as well as on a smaller scale- through communities and families, the efforts of inter-national help, and the efforts of the medical and science community.

COVID-19 asks each of us, as many of us are social distancing and practicing self-quarantining:

What is your identity?

Do you hide from yourself with the distractions of your everyday life? Is the fastness and speed of everyday life a mere distraction from your true self?

COVID-19 is bringing to light what it means to be human. As we struggle to stay home without the daily distractions of life, similarly to when Kafka’s Gregor in Metamorphosis wakes up, horrifyingly, as a large insect, having to forcefully and suddenly forego the motions and distractions of daily life- we are suddenly confronted with ourselves, and the absurdity of life itself.

Egypt is, to me…

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Egypt is, to me, a blind man standing calmly on the side of the street waiting for someone to help him cross over. Within 10 seconds, a boy ran over and held his arm to help him across the busy street.

Egypt is, to me, when I was stuck in an elevator and before long half the building was trying to help me.

Egypt is, to me, an old lady falling from exhaustion and heat at a bus station and 5 people running over to help her up.

Egypt is, to me, when I fainted on the subway from heat stroke, a man jumping out of the subway at my stop to give me his water and the security guard running out to get help.

Egypt is, to me, my Arabic teacher inviting me to her house and cooking for a whole day for me.

Egypt is, to me, a country of love. A developing country, you can see the strings of things attached together, a country with many hardships- but through it all, people helping each other through love.

The Greener Grass

The wealthy little boy sat

Uncomfortable in his blazer and tie

He stared miserably out of the schoolbus window

His outlet into what he thought was freedom

The poor boy sat

In his tattered and dirtied clothes

On the back of a truck

He stared miserably back

At the wealthy little boy

Wishing to have his life

Sinai

Drifted into a dream

The sea gurgling next to me like

A newborn baby

The dome

peppered with stars, witnessed

Shooting stars flirting-

A rip in the canvas

And another one… and another

I could not help but ask

To the sky:

What are you?

———————————————–

August 8, 2019

Nuweibaa, South Sinai, Egypt

Inspired by a first time falling asleep underneath the stars and a first time seeing a meteor shower.

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A Call for Pedagogical Reform

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“Renaissance in Person” by Rick Steves

From what we know, formal education, in other words, the practice of a group of students learning together in a designated space, has existed since ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient India, and ancient China. Education systems flourished differently according to the culture and place it existed in. After all, nothing is produced in a vacuum. In Western Europe, cathedral schools flourished during the Early Middle Ages from as early as the 500’s CE, while in the Islamic world madrassa’s (Arabic word for “school”) flourished from the emphasis on knowledge. Madrassa’s were separate from the mosques, where learning and religious activities were conducted.

Yet education was not accessible to all levels of people in society until the 19th society. The industrial revolution led to a rise in demand for education and an educated workforce. Education became available to the poor masses, producing a prototype for the modern global education system existing today.

State-owned education originated in 19th century Prussia (today’s Germany). After the Prussian army was defeated by Napoleon, the Prussian aristocrats installed the first ever compulsory education system, believing their defeat was rooted in lack of education, or discipline.

Gradually, education underwent a series of global synchronization, which can be understood through three main peaks of expansion: the Colonial Era, the World War, and the Cold War.

Education Systems Today

There is a fundamental crisis in our global education system. Today’s global education systems are primarily designed in the form of disciplinary learning. This method of disciplinary learning constrains the learner into a number of commandment that must be the underlying basis and start towards analysing and examining the subject matter within that discipline.

Let us look at the topic of war. War has always been a part of the human condition, and so, if history has taught us anything, it is that wars will continue to be a part of societies. Which discipline should be used to study war?

An International Relations student would examine war from its perspective on nation-states, how they engage in intra-state and inter-state wars, preventable measures for war, post-war paradigms, how wars impact and shape the nature of global political relationships. Meanwhile, a sociology professor would examine war from a macrolevel level, the patterns of war making, including how societies engage in warfare, the meaning that war has in society, and the relationship between state structure and war making. A historian would examine war from a historical point of view, simply an archival take on the list of wars, its impact on history, and is beneficial to all other disciplines. A political scientist would collect and analyse the data of wars to extract plausible conclusions. An anthropological perspective of war and violence may focus on the sub-group of the military – their norms, values, and so on. An economical approach would reveal patterns and conclusions regarding the relationship between the economy and wartimes- whether this be a correlative or cause-and-effect relationship. Linguistics and/or English Literature would focus on examining the roles of propaganda and language in warfare. Psychology would shed light on what are the psychological causes and effects of warfare.

In order to attain the most holistic understanding of the subject matter, there needs to be an analysis of war from each of these disciplines. The International Relations student would end up having a completely different perspective on war than the Sociology student, and so on and so forth. What if you put them all in a room- how much could they learn from each other, wouldn’t the collective outcome of all their perspectives and methods of analysing and examining the same subject of war lead to a more holistic understanding and therefore beneficial and useful in application to, for example, finding and implementing solutions to post-war conflict or in methods of preventing interstate or intrastate wars?

Revolutionising Pedagogy

The concept of interdisciplinary studies has its origins in the 18th century, today it is most widely seen in America’s liberal arts colleges. As American educational reformer and philosopher John Dewey wrote in his The School and Society book, Chapter 3, “Waste in Education”:

“We do not have a series of stratified earths, one of which is mathematical, another physical, another historical, and so on. All studies grow out of relations in the one great common world.”

Therefore, “all studies are naturally unified”.

This argument pushed for changes in mainstream pedagogy through the likes of John Dewey, Ralph Tyler, and Benjamin Bloom through enabling a more interdisciplinary-curriculums to exist, today it is far from being the primary form of education systems provided to children.

This would require collaboration amongst educators. Indeed, it is more than implementing changes in how students select their topic of study for university, but indeed, a revolution of the very nature of how education systems are set up to examine the world around us. In order to ensure collaboration of professionals within their respective fields, talks and meetings should be set up across cities and in university programs to first introduce this concept of an interdisciplinary education and its importance to understanding what is, naturally, a variant world that requires variant disciplines to study it.

In this way, students would be able to build their own interdisciplinary pathway. This would be done by choosing their own pathway to examine the subject matter. For example, in order to study global warming- anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, and geologists would need to come together and share ideas and lenses to examining the subject of global warming.

An interdisciplinary approach to education would also revolutionize the student’s role in the process. Promoting John Dewey’s criticism of the student as a passive-learner, this would instead promote the student as an active participant in a back-and-forth process with the teacher. This would open an entire new area of thought, for solutions to conflict, new ways of thinking by looking at traditional topics that have been studied in a more rigid and constraining manner.

My Experience as a Non-Muslim of Ramadan in Egypt

My first Ramadan experience was in Egypt, Om Al-Donya, Mother of the World. Ramadan occurs during the 9th of the 12 months of the Islamic Lunar Calendar, and so it occurs on a different date every year.

I’ve found myself becoming much kinder and sympathetic as a person, during the time of Ramadan. This is primarily because I’m surrounded by people who are fasting and who are thirsty, hungry, weak- and are all not complaining, but doing it willingly and gladly. I’ve noticed I’m more sympathetic to people, being more polite than usual, etc. I was pondering this as I got into an uber, feeling quite good about myself but simultaneously quite sorry for them (perhaps this is Eurocentric of me), then I caught myself – why don’t I treat people to the best of my abilities usually? Why is it that during Ramadan only am I the most considerate I can be?

However, I suppose this is one of the many benefits of Ramadan. It is a time of cleansing oneself of one’s own impurities. Even though I am not a Muslim and so I am not fasting, it is affecting me very much. Having to alter my days and times to the millions of people fasting for Ramadan, who are going by the times of the rising sun and setting sun, is extremely refreshing. It seems everyone around me is going back to our roots – as mankind used to live – not by the time we monitor with our man-made clocks. Because of this, the Muslims fasting for Ramadan don’t sleep as much – in fact, I’m not sure when they sleep during Ramadan, and I’m not sure they know when they sleep either…!

In Egypt, the normative rules here are all lifted up and others are quickly put in its place during the month of Ramadan. The days before Ramadan were surreal to me, with everyone constantly talking about it, and large supermarkets like Carrefour becoming an absolute nightmare of human traffic-jams, with many products disappearing off shelves as people go and stock up on food for the month of Ramadan. After awhile of this, we finally reached the first day of Ramadan, I remember being a bit shocked at seeing the transformations of people I knew. Everyone was tired, looking at me with tired eyes and tired smiles, not speaking as much as usual.

It is OK to drink and eat in front of Muslims fasting, as they understand if you not a Muslim you would not fast, yet one should try to refrain from that as much as possible – simply to be considerate. When the sun sets (around 6.30pm now- “now” being the beginning of Ramadan), the streets become eerily empty, as everyone is eating one of the two meals of Ramadan, Iftar (الإفطار), with their families or friends. You can almost feel the millions of people in all directions around you waiting for the evening Adhan (the Islamic call to prayer), which signals the sun has set and the feast can begin. Suhoor (السحور) is the second meal during Ramadan, which must be eaten before the sun rises (at around 5.30am now). For suhoor one of the most common, traditional and popular dishes is ful and ta’miya (fava beans and Egyptian falafel). Some eat at midnight, and then sleep, waking up to pray during suhoor (which means around 4.30 am – before the sun rises) but not eating.

Pregnant women, elderly, sick people, women menstruating, young children, and other situations whereby you may not be physically able to fast – are all exempt from fasting. Perhaps around the age of 8 or 9 children may begin fasting, introducing them to the concept first by 4 hours or so, and then increasing the number of hours as they grow older.

Ramadan is a time to focus on family, loved ones, friends, and prayer. Some people I know would go to mosques everyday, and live there, just cleansing themselves of human impurities. During Suhoor and Iftar friends and family are often invited over to each other’s houses for feasts.

There are three layers of cleansing during Ramadan:

1. Fasting of Al-Shari’ah (Jurisprudential Fasting)

Fasting from food and drink, intercourse (even if married), is the easiest, as it is the physical, external layer.

2. Fasting of Al-Tariqat (Ethical Fasting)

This focuses on things considered Haram such as gossiping, swearing, non-Islamic dress, and so on.

3. Fasting of Al-Haqiqat (Mystical Fasting)

The last layer only a handful of people in the world can do, which is very deep meditation – a state of detachment from anything other than God.

If you talk about Ramadan, you must talk about the TV shows during Ramadan, and the food. Let’s talk about the TV shows first. Millions of people sit in front of the TV for much of the day during the days of Ramadan. Although everyone troops off to work each morning, not much is done – as everyone is bone-dead tired and weak. When they come home for Iftar, millions of Egyptians (Egypt is the Arab world’s most populous country), settle down in front of the TV and wait to break their fast. In some districts, the streets become populated with people sharing food at night, with all the shops opening all throughout the night, and people awake throughout much of the night. In other areas, friends and family are invited over to each other’s houses, as people settle down for the fast in the evening.

Soups are important during Ramadan, as they are usually had first before eating to ease their way into food and to break the fast. Having drinks first are another way to break the fast. An Egyptian traditional Ramadan drink is Amar El-Din, made out of dried apricots and olive oil. The main food itself usually consists of a carb meal, like rice, pasta or mahshi (anything stuffed with vegetables) with some form of animal protein, like meat, chicken, or fish. Desserts are also an important part of Ramadan food culture. Some of the most loved Egyptian desserts during Ramadan include but are not limited to Mohalabeya, Konafa, Baklava, basboosa.

Other customs of Ramadan include:

The traditions of the Fanoos (الفوانيس, “lanterns”). They are hung all over restaurants, shops, people’s houses and apartments. Normally brightly coloured, either lit up with a candle or lightbulb, they make anywhere you look more colourful. This is specifically for Egyptian Ramadan, however.
Reading the khatma, which represents a full reading of the Qu’ran over the month. There are 30 chapters, fitting for one a night for the approximately 30 days of Ramadan that vary by one or two days every year.
Charity. Although this is one of the five tenets during Islam, all the five tenets are exemplified and focused on even more during the Holy month of Ramadan.

Every Muslim I’ve talked to that is fasting is happily doing it for ربنا (“rabana”, our Lord), and doesn’t complain. After having studied and read about Ramadan so much, it is infinitely more rich and beautiful when witnessing it all around you, for miles and miles. About 24% of the world is Muslim, which means that a large portion of almost a fourth of the world is currently fasting. That’s something to think about.

And so, رمضان كريم (“Ramadan Kareem”) – literally translated to “Kind Ramadan”, but when said to someone it means, “I hope Ramadan will be kind to you” or “wishing you a kind/generous Ramadan.”