Ramadan in Gaza

By Najwa Sa'd

Imagine a tiny room, rather damp, of paint-poor cinderblock, crammed with an old bed frame and a rickety wardrobe chest piled high with this family's belongings, dusty suitcases teetering on its top shelf. A chair, its seat broken, stands unused against one wall. Woven straw mats cover the floor, which at night becomes a wild scavenging ground for roaches and ants. A door, slightly ajar, crudely fashioned out of corrugated iron and hinged only by little bits of rope, offers a semblance of privacy. In reality, there is no privacy, no quiet, no peace.

A square gap between the blocks creates a small window, facing into the back alley and a neighbor's doorway. Little fresh air issues from it.

Ramadan: Day-long Fasting for the Faithful

During the long hot weeks of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the crisp, tapping sounds of drums break the early-morning hush in the camp, summoning the faithful to eat before the dawn. One awakens to intoxicating smells: the goodness of fresh bread, boiled eggs, small salads, tea scented with sage "marameeyah" and heavily dosed with sugar. Throughout the holy month, this simple early-morning meal must provide nourishment to last until after sunset, when observant Muslims can break their day-long fast. The family eats in silence, and the men then rise to begin journeys of up to three hours for work within Israel. Under Israeli law, they must return to Gaza each night to sleep. Then, they rise again before dawn and commute again to Israel to work on a land which once was theirs, but where they now are forbidden to remain for even one night.

There still are touches of the romantic in the Gaza Strip: the beaches of Deir el-Balah, the date palms, the vineyards and lush groves of Kahn Younis. However, the romantic imagery belies the true situation, which strikes the wary visitor hard with the raw smells and signs of what Arab Gazans refer to as "devolution." And alongside Gaza's poverty, the Israeli government plans to build vacation resorts along Gaza's Mediterranean coast, so that Jewish settlers can enjoy their leisure time.

Gaza: Seething and Festering

Gaza's Palestinian inhabitants, most of them refugees from what the West calls "pre-1967 Israel," speak of Gaza as "the forgotten land." Within its bare 140 square miles, more than two-thirds of which have been expropriated for use by Israel, the population, forgotten in the West, is very much alive. In fact, since the 1967 occupation by Israel, it has soared to 510,000, making Gaza the most densely-populated area on our planet, with 3,643 persons per square mile. The Strip is seething and festering, with deplorable health conditions, a colonized economy, and a disenfranchised polity. Although Israelis fear that the population growth in Gaza represents the most explosive issue their military authorities now face, their response, inexplicably, has been to take more land from the crowded Palestinians and turn it over to highly subsidized and thinly scattered Jewish "settlers."

Who, therefore, can predict how, or even where, this family will observe Ramadan in future years?

Najwa Sa'd, a Washington, DC-based Palestinian-American writer, lived in Gaza from April to July, 1986, and has produced a slide show on Gaza and the Negev.