Ramadan in Yemen
September 30th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Yes, yet again the holy month of Ramadan has arrived, and Yemen, like all Muslim countries, goes bananas as people try to abstain from food, drink, smoking and thoughts of sex from sunrise until sunset. The idea is to have an idea of how poor people who regularly starve live their lives and thus be more humble. The month is also ‘The Holy Month’ and people are expected to follow all religious rules more strictly and be properly religious throughout the month.
Typically, people who drink or have other vices that are not considered Islamic, abstain from these during the month. People also pray more and many spend their idle time, which there is a lot of during Ramadan, to read the Qur’an and the Tradition. As all good deeds are supposed to count for more in the final account on Judgement Day (just as bad actions count double also) and the streets of Sana’a are suddenly packed with beggars taking advantage of people’s generosity.
Yemen is a very religious country and the social pressure to conform to all religious rules is ever-present. When all your friends go to the mosque to pray it is hard to be the only one choosing not to come. The fast is therefore followed rigorously in the public sphere, although people jokingly talk of ‘others’ sneaking off home to chew qat during the day.
Having spent Ramadan in other Arabic countries, there is one thing that stands out in Yemen compared to how Muslims live through the month other places. Everywhere, people change their schedules to make life easier for themselves, at least as long as they are able to. Office hours are pushed so that people get an extra hour or two of sleep in the morning and shops and other businesses tend to open later.
In Yemen, however, the day is turned completely upside down as most Yemenis seem to sleep all day and stay up all night. To foreigners, this is regularly mentioned as hypocrisy as Ramadan is supposed to be a month of trial where each one should suffer a bit in order to remember that which is greater than oneself. However, as is the case with most people in religion or not, we tend to find the way of least resistance. In Yemen, though, this has been completely institutionalised to the extent that shops open only in the late afternoon and stay open until the last meal of the day, just before sunrise.
Since qat cannot be chewed during the day, it is chewed after Iftar, the breaking of the fast just as the sun sets. As qat imposes insomnia in many chewers, they are not able to sleep until after sunrise anyway, and a large segment of the Yemeni population only gets out of bed at some point after midday, meaning they fast only for four to six hours a day, hardly a feat according to those who are forced to work on a regular schedule.
The hours before the Maghrib, the sunset prayer, are the most dangerous in Sana’a during Ramadan. As people’s tempers are frayed due to the lack of food, drink and cigarettes (I don’t know if the lack of sex has much of an impact), fights break out easily, people impatiently shove one another and the traffic goes crazy. Everybody are racing to get home in time for Iftar and the streets are jammed with cars. Thankfully, due to people’s attempts to keep their nerves under control as loosing your temper is not considered appropriate, there is slightly less honking than normal on the streets. Crossing them, though, is a suicidal project. Countless times the drivers have seen no reason to break as I have been trying to cross the street between my house and the market, and I have had to jump out of the way and shout “Ramadan Mubarak / Blessed Ramadan” to make them feel ashamed.
Racing for Iftar is fun for us who do not fast and can observe the whole thing from the ‘outside,’ meaning on a full stomach. A few days ago I was invited for Iftar at my teacher’s house usually a 15 minute bus ride from where I live. Just getting to the bus station was trying, as there are people everywhere both trying to get home and to buy the last few ingredients for the Iftar-dinner. The worst, though, are those who are just hanging around waiting for the Maghrib-prayer so they can sit down in a restaurant and eat. They just walk around at a snail’s pace and clog up the streets for us who are in a hurry to go and eat!
The bus station was of course utter chaos. People were running for the busses and as soon as it is more than half full, they start shouting that it’s soon Maghrib and that we have to get going. I was lucky to get on early and get a window seat, meaning that I was removed from the hustle and didn’t get shifted around so that we wouldn’t end up in a situation where unrelated men and women would sit next to each other, God forbid!
To the shouting of ‘Maghrib! Maghrib!’ we got underway. For most of the way, though, people were clinging to the outside of the bus trying to get home as soon as possible, a sight rarely seen in Sana’a as there are usually enough busses to go around. From my safe spot I just heard what was going on around the door: ‘Aaaaah Maaaghrib…Maghriiii*bam*’ Outside my window, the pedestrians had panic in their eyes and those having been able to hail a motorcycle were clinging on for their lives as the driver weaved in and out of traffic at a breakneck pace, himself trying to get home in time and willingly risking the lives of himself and his passenger in the process. To my surprise, I was at Ghalib’s house in time for sunset.
The fact that social life goes on until the early hours of the morning, means that the noise of day is transplanted to the late nights instead. This gives wonderfully peaceful mornings here, but makes evenings utter hell (with the notable exception of an hour and a half after the Maghrib-prayer). The children are up all night setting light to their home-made fireworks and throwing them at innocent bystanders. Even at one in the morning the honking outside my house is deafening as people are going home from their qat-chews.
Having earlier established (by consensus with people who’ve travelled in the Middle East) that the Yemeni call to prayer is the worst by far in the world, it is unfortunately doubled now during Ramadan. Apart from the five regular calls to prayer, there are numerous new ones taking place at all hours of the day. After midnight there are a minimum of three, and the kids in the Qur’anic school next door shout through the loudspeakers as if Judgement Day is just around the corner.
Surely thinking it the holiest thing one can do during Ramadan, the imam in the nearest mosque has dutifully installed an extra megaphone on the opposite side of the street to increase the volume of his blessings even further. Before, we mostly heard feedback when his screaming starts at 3:45 AM. Now we get both the feedback and the screaming at the same time, and he is on call about ten times a day. It’s really something else…
It’s a trying time of year for us kufar (unbelievers), but I thank Superdrug for their earplugs and Emirates Airlines for the eye covering. I do as the Yemenis: I try to sleep through Ramadan as best I can.
Ramadan mubarak!
Shaun Overton wrote on 10/5/07 at 4:08 :
Hilarious, man… I’m dying to go back.