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Ramadan reached a devastated gas. While the rest of the world embarks on a festive mood a month of fasting and prayer, we do it with grief and sorrow.
The echo of war is still ringing hard. There is no certainty that this cessation of fire will continue. People worry about what happens afterwards. They are afraid that war can come back.
The memory and trauma of what we have witnessed and have experienced in the last year, have been heavy in our minds.
Last year, it was not the first time to watch Ramadan during war. In 2014, I was only nine years old, but I remember very well how our nights in Ramadan were filled with air strikes and destruction and how we had to rush out of our home in the dark, running away from the bombing in our neighborhood.
But Ramadan was different last year. It was unimaginably worse. Hunger was everywhere. We have achieved all day, just to break our post with a can of humus or beans shared between six people. Without electricity, we would have chewed a tasteless canned food in the dark. We would barely see our faces on the table.
We were far from most of our extended family. My grandmother, aunts and cousins with whom I spent Ramadan was scattered in different places, some displaced in tents and others stuck in the north. The month of cohesion became a month of separation and isolation.
Ramadan was deprived of his joyful spirit. We longed to hear Adhan (a call for a prayer) in Magrib before breaking us quickly or at FIR before we started it. But these sounds never came. Each mosque is destroyed. There were people who wanted to make Adhan, but they were afraid – they were afraid that the sound of their voices would bring air strikes, that it would make them whole.
Instead of dividing our post to the familiar sound of the mosque of the nearby mosque, we broke it on the horrific echoes of rockets and firing.
Before the war, I went with my family to the mosque after Iftar to pray and see our loved ones. Then we would walk the streets of Gaza, enjoying the lively atmosphere of Ramadan before heading to home to make a fresh cat.
But last year we had nowhere to go to pray against the genocide background.
Even the Grand Mosque of Omari, one of the most beautiful and historical mosques of Gaza, where my father and brothers spent the last 10 nights of Ramadan, listening to the Qur'an, recited by the most beautiful voices – it was not bombarded in ruins, defeated beyond recognition. The place that once echoed with prayers and peace was turned into dust and ruins.
This year, Ramadan begins during the cessation of fire. There are no air strikes that shake the ground as we break fast. There are no explosions that are reflected in the silence of Firar. There is no fear of decorating our homes, of hanging colored lights that can make us a goal.
Against the backdrop of pain and devastation, life – who has been paused for so long – tries to return to the streets of Gaza.
The shops and markets that were not destroyed opened again and the street sellers returned.
Even the big supermarket in Nuseira, Hyper Mall, opened its doors again. Before Ramadan, my father took me and my sister there. We could barely contain our excitement when we stepped into the brightly lit mall. For a moment, we had the feeling that we were going back in time. The shelves were reserved again, full of everything we long for – different types of chocolate candy, cookies and chips. There were Ramadan decorations, lanterns of all shapes and sizes, boxes with dates, colored dried fruits and Qamar Al-Din.
But this abundance is deceptive. Much of what fills the shelves is offered on commercial trucks that make up a large part of the trucks allowed in gas at the expense of humanitarian aid. At the same time, these products have become inaccessible to most people who have lost their livelihoods and homes.
So, what will most families break up with this year quickly? This will be a little more than a canned bean: ordinary food with rice, molocy, or any vegetables that they can afford.
For the first Iftar, my family will have Mushan, a Palestinian dish, which is made from chicken meat, Sa bread and lots of onions. We know we are among the lucky ones. The majority of Gaza people cannot afford the fresh chicken, which has re-appeared in the markets at a double pre-war price.
But a rich, traditional Ifar is not the only thing that will be missing from Ramadan's masses in Gaza.
More than 48,000 people were killed during the war. Whole families have been deleted from the civil register and will not monitor Ramadan this year. There will be an empty space on so many tablets from the Iftar: a father whose voice calling his children on the table will never be heard again, a son whose eagerness to break his fasting will never be seen again or a mother whose skilled hands will never prepare delicious food again.
I also lost the people I love. My aunt's husband, who invited us to Iftar every year, was brutally killed. My friends slash, Lina and Roa, whom I met at the mosque after the Tarawih prayer was tormented.
The festive spirit is gone, but Ramadan's core is here. This month is a chance to withdraw from the distraction and worries of ordinary life and to relate to our faith again. This is a time of forgiveness. It is time to seek closeness to God and spiritual resilience.
Our mosques may have been destroyed, but our faith has not been broken. We will still do Tarawih in homes and tents with half -destroyed, whispering all our desires in Dua and seeking comfort in the recitation of the Qur'an, knowing that Allah will reward us for all the suffering we have endured.
The anger expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazee's editorial position.
