Over the weekend, I went down to the coastal city of Saida, forty minutes south of Beirut, to check out Ramadan festivities there. I was inspired by a small item in the Daily Star (and, needless to say, a full-page advertisement for “Saida Ramadan Festival” elsewhere in the same issue…Oh, Daily Star…), and armed with the hope that Ramadan as a cultural phenomenon has more consequence somewhere in Lebanon than it does here in Beirut. Boy does it.
Saida is not a big city — it has a population of a couple hundred thousand, and it’s fairly walkable. (Saida is the Arabic name; it is often called Sidon in English, but not by me.) The city’s public spaces — the old city, the corniche, the cafes near the port (pictured above) — are always popular on summer evenings, but the gathered mass of people out drinking coffee and smoking nargile at ten pm Saturday night had even my friend A., a Saida resident who hosted me and another friend from Beirut, a little taken aback. The three of us sat down at one of the cafes, a cute shop called Foul Abu Abed, and learned the first rule of Ramadan nights: there is no dinner after Iftar. My Beirut friend and I ordered some hummus though, and an assortment of foul-related mezze, and tried not to mind being the only people eating in the vicinity. Abu Abed himself, a portly, energetic man with unusually short arms, stood near our table, barking orders to the kitchen and shooing away the boys who came around selling roses and watches. “Abu Abed,” we were told by A., is also a generic Lebanese term for a sort of public character, who sits in cafes and knows everything about everyone around. Our Abu Abed mostly ignored us, and we were served by his son, who told us that the crowds were typical for Ramadan. The restaurant stays open until 4:30 am, he said, at which point it closes for the entire day.
Down the street, a massive contingent of army and police had gathered outside the Khan el-Franj, a 17th century Ottoman-style hotel and trading post, which is the centerpiece of Saida’s Ramadan festivities. On this particular night, the Lebanese singer Abdel Karim Shaar was scheduled to perform — the show was sold out long in advance — and the high levels of security appeared to be for some Lebanese dignitary who was in attendance. (Given Saida’s political leanings, and the sheer amount of security, the options seemed limited to the former (and then-temporarily-designated) Prime Minister Fouad Sinoira, and the once (and now re-)designated Prime Minister Saad Hariri. I’m pretty sure I saw the makings of Hariri’s motorcade parked outside, but one never knows.)
Unable to get into the Khan, we lounged for a while just outside in some temporary couches, and watched the Saidanese — dressed in their Saturday-night best — lining up for admission. Near the door, Ramadan soap operas — a special of this month, known for their heightened levels of violence and sexual intrigue (people wait eleven months between seasons) — played on a giant projection screen. There is something intoxicatingly primal and gratuitious about the Ramadan festivities — the asceticism of daytime seemed to be almost perfectly counterbalanced by the excesses of the night. This, of course, has not gone unnoticed, and it is a recurring feature of Ramadan to complain about the holy month’s indulgences and commercialization. (Last year, a poll found that nearly 70% of Muslims thought the festivities had become “too commercial.”)
Of course, it’s fun, too. Looking to get into the spirit, then, my friends and I set off into the old city, in search of something sweet. What we found, in the brightly lit and bustling old souk, was the Ramadan treat of all Ramadan treats: a hot, sugary cheese-filled pastry, encased in a sweet, fried pancake-like dough, and soaked in simple syrup, called atayef halloum. “I never want to eat sugar again,” one of my friends announced, in between bites. Just wait until tomorrow night.
