Fast with sour aftertaste
RAMADAN: CELEBRATING AND ENJOYING END OF FASTING IN FOREIGN LAND Displaced by the long and deadly Syrian war, memories of life in Ghouta are stained with siege.
After years of Syrian government siege, Umm Samer can finally prepare an appetising spread to end her family’s daily Ramadan fast. But war has given the holy month a bitter aftertaste.
Crouched near a tiny gas stove in the mud hut that is now her home in northwest Syria, the 51-year-old from eastern Ghouta slices a juicy aubergine into large chunks for the evening meal.
“Yes, there’s plenty of food here, but being far away from home is really hard for us,” she says of her hometown of Zamalka, in the former rebel enclave.
Umm, her husband and five children – two of them disabled – fled Ghouta about two months ago as it came under government control, setting up near the town of Maarrat Masrin in Idlib province.
Their memories of life in Ghouta are stained with siege: during the government’s five-year encirclement, medicine was hard to find and child malnutrition rates soared as affordable food became scarce.
Every day, Umm did her best to stave off her children’s hunger with a meagre diet of radishes, spinach and parsley. When they could, they ate small portions of bulgur wheat or barley bread, which often gave them stomach aches.
When Ramadan came around, the family would observe the daylong fast like millions of other Muslims around the world. But instead of breaking their fast at sundown with traditional multiple-course meals and desserts, Umm’s family gathered around the same sparse spread.
“We’d eat it all with spoons because there was no bread. We couldn’t even get biscuits for the kids,” she recalls. “Sometimes we would wait two days before breaking our fast because there was nothing to eat.”
Across the Islamic world, Ramadan is a month of prayer and remembering the less fortunate, but also a time of endless gatherings with loved ones.
In Ghouta, says Umm, the heavy raids made that impossible.
“We wouldn’t dare meet up for iftar anymore,” she says, referring to the fast-breaking sunset meal.
“This year in Idlib it’s different. There’s rice, meat, vegetables, fruit and sweets,” she says, sitting down on a simple mat for iftar.
They begin with sips of chilled water, then dig into dishes of turmeric-flavoured rice, salad and stewed vegetables.
The meal is plentiful compared with what they were eating just a year ago, but Umm says starting a new life for a seven-member household is tough.
“Over there [in Zamalka, Ghouta], you’re fine because it’s your hometown, your home and your land,” she says.
“None of us work here. The relief groups help us but it’s limited,” she worries.
Like in Muslim communities around the world, aid groups in Idlib are distributing iftar meals to families in need.
One of them, Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous, prepares dozens of sealed packages of rice and meat every day. Men and women line up outside their centre to pick up the food packages.
Such meals are life-changing for Umm Mohammed, 53, who was displaced from Ghouta a month ago with her husband, two daughters and two sons.
They too resettled in the camp of earthen huts in Maarrat Masrin, but siege is still on their mind.
More than 350 000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria’s war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests. –