Read Online Jasmine and Fire by Salma Abdelnour - Free Book Online
Authors: Salma Abdelnour
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passengers along the way—you’re likely to hear something like this from your driver or a fellow rider:
“Kiss ikht hal dawleh.”
Goddamn this government. Actually the remark involves a slur about female anatomy, but it gets lost in translation—perhaps for the better.
The response might be
“Yikrhib beita,”
may its house get wrecked, a common Arabic yell of exasperation.
Sometimes the conversation heats up, as several people in the service taxi—or in the grocery store, or at the dry cleaner—agree on a topic and get more specific with the bashing: for instance “Can we just hear the results of the UN tribunal already, and be done with it?” Or “Who does Hezbollah think it is?” Other times there’s an awkward silence, and it’s clear that not everyone is on the samelingering tensions between and among Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites, and with an ever-addled government that never seems to govern, it’s rare for politics not to make at least a brief appearance in a conversation. Now and then I jump into the fray, and other times I just want to say
“Khalas, intawash’d!”
Enough—my ears are ringing!
As I’m plowing through my editing assignment, I can hear the Ramadan call to prayer echoing from a mosque nearby. This is the third week of the annual Muslim month of fasting, and the celebrations that mark the end of the fast will be starting soon. During the upcoming Eid al-Fitr holiday, families and friends close out Ramadan by getting together for festive dinners, which, like Christmas or Easter feasts, can run from the cozy and casual to the lavish and showy.
I’m more aware of Ramadan traditions now—the daily fasting schedule, the Eid al-Fitr dinners—than I was during my childhood in Beirut. Arguably I wasn’t consciously aware of much, culturally speaking, back then, other than Tintin and Asterix books and
Grendizer
, a
Transformers
-like Japanese cartoon that Samir and I would watch on TV. But one of the effects of the civil war was that many Lebanese, Christians and Muslims, felt their religious identities embattled and so deepened them; now religious celebrations, even around my comparatively secular and diverse district of Ras Beirut, seem more prominent than they used to be.
The war also reaffirmed, in some cases more strictly than others, the distinct Christian and Muslim parts of town—the Muslim west, the Christian east. Even though our neighborhood remained mostly an exception, it’s become increasingly Muslim in head count, with more Shiites migrating from the suburbs andjoining the Sunni Muslims and Protestants and Greek Orthodox and other sects already there.
I’m glad I arrived in Beirut in time for Ramadan; I’ve been hoping to experience more of it this year than I’ve had a chance to in the past. During the fasting month, I’ve been noticing that the Corniche, the promenade that runs east–west along Beirut’s Mediterranean coastline, gets even more crowded with pedestrians in the late evenings. It’s a lively scene: at night, after breaking the fast with the daily
iftar
dinner, people of all ages stroll along the Corniche, some women wearing veils or hijabs and others not, and little kids stay up giddily way past their normal bedtime. Muslim families, and young men smoking
argilehs
—the local word for hookahs—and groups of women friends, and children and teenagers tagging along with parents and relatives, often socialize after dinner, then have another meal just before they go to bed, so they can better cope with the long fast the next day: no food or water is permitted from dawn until sundown during Ramadan.
My mother’s friend Umayma, who looks in photos from her twenties and thirties eerily like the glamorous, gamine-chic Jean Seberg in the Godard film
Breathless
, calls me one day just before the end of Ramadan to invite me to a special iftar feast for Eid al-Fitr at her home in Ras Beirut. At these dinners, families and friends gather and
“Kiss ikht hal dawleh.”
Goddamn this government. Actually the remark involves a slur about female anatomy, but it gets lost in translation—perhaps for the better.
The response might be
“Yikrhib beita,”
may its house get wrecked, a common Arabic yell of exasperation.
Sometimes the conversation heats up, as several people in the service taxi—or in the grocery store, or at the dry cleaner—agree on a topic and get more specific with the bashing: for instance “Can we just hear the results of the UN tribunal already, and be done with it?” Or “Who does Hezbollah think it is?” Other times there’s an awkward silence, and it’s clear that not everyone is on the samelingering tensions between and among Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites, and with an ever-addled government that never seems to govern, it’s rare for politics not to make at least a brief appearance in a conversation. Now and then I jump into the fray, and other times I just want to say
“Khalas, intawash’d!”
Enough—my ears are ringing!
As I’m plowing through my editing assignment, I can hear the Ramadan call to prayer echoing from a mosque nearby. This is the third week of the annual Muslim month of fasting, and the celebrations that mark the end of the fast will be starting soon. During the upcoming Eid al-Fitr holiday, families and friends close out Ramadan by getting together for festive dinners, which, like Christmas or Easter feasts, can run from the cozy and casual to the lavish and showy.
I’m more aware of Ramadan traditions now—the daily fasting schedule, the Eid al-Fitr dinners—than I was during my childhood in Beirut. Arguably I wasn’t consciously aware of much, culturally speaking, back then, other than Tintin and Asterix books and
Grendizer
, a
Transformers
-like Japanese cartoon that Samir and I would watch on TV. But one of the effects of the civil war was that many Lebanese, Christians and Muslims, felt their religious identities embattled and so deepened them; now religious celebrations, even around my comparatively secular and diverse district of Ras Beirut, seem more prominent than they used to be.
The war also reaffirmed, in some cases more strictly than others, the distinct Christian and Muslim parts of town—the Muslim west, the Christian east. Even though our neighborhood remained mostly an exception, it’s become increasingly Muslim in head count, with more Shiites migrating from the suburbs andjoining the Sunni Muslims and Protestants and Greek Orthodox and other sects already there.
I’m glad I arrived in Beirut in time for Ramadan; I’ve been hoping to experience more of it this year than I’ve had a chance to in the past. During the fasting month, I’ve been noticing that the Corniche, the promenade that runs east–west along Beirut’s Mediterranean coastline, gets even more crowded with pedestrians in the late evenings. It’s a lively scene: at night, after breaking the fast with the daily
iftar
dinner, people of all ages stroll along the Corniche, some women wearing veils or hijabs and others not, and little kids stay up giddily way past their normal bedtime. Muslim families, and young men smoking
argilehs
—the local word for hookahs—and groups of women friends, and children and teenagers tagging along with parents and relatives, often socialize after dinner, then have another meal just before they go to bed, so they can better cope with the long fast the next day: no food or water is permitted from dawn until sundown during Ramadan.
My mother’s friend Umayma, who looks in photos from her twenties and thirties eerily like the glamorous, gamine-chic Jean Seberg in the Godard film
Breathless
, calls me one day just before the end of Ramadan to invite me to a special iftar feast for Eid al-Fitr at her home in Ras Beirut. At these dinners, families and friends gather and
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