Malfuf wa Malik : Silence, Sounds, Shapes, Ramadan Stories and Traditions

I’m still in the mood for oud. Here’s Ahmad Alshaiba from Yemen with an oud cover of The Sound of Silence, one of my all time favourite songs -

and also of Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You. The absence of lyrics is a serious improvement imo, the music's okay, but thumbs down for the chauvinistic words.  The polar opposite of favourite, not a fan  - no idea why it won the Grammy yesterday...but then I'm not the demographic that Ed is singing for. Though I'm glad to see the choice is creating its own firestorm of protest.

Anyways, take a listen while I tell you about...

Ramadan

Ramadan is the lunar month, the ninth in the Islamic calendar, when practising Muslims are obliged to forego the gratification of all physical appetites from sunrise to sunset. In Bahrain, halfway through the month, on the full moon night, there’s a celebration called Girga’oon. It’s a commemoration of Hassan ibn Ali’s birthday, who is the eldest grandson of the Prophet. Revered by both the major sects for being an Imam (Shia) and Caliph (Sunni). Neighbourhood children come singing songs and are given sweets and small sums of money as gifts from the houses around. Haven’t encountered it anywhere else I’ve lived.

And in Egypt they have the tradition of the Ramadan fanous, which is a decorative lantern symbolising the month of Ramadan. Like the Christmas tree means Christmas. Neither have anything to do intrinsically with religion, but have come to be irrevocably associated with a religious celebration/observance.

A bunch of these lamps are lit all through public and private spaces, and the whole city looks very festive and colourful. Families put them up at the front door or balcony, tiny ones in niches on the wall, large ones as the centrepiece on the Iftar (the meal after sunset, breaking of the fast) table. The lanterns come on every nightfall for the thirty nights of Ramadan, uniquely lighting up the month. I saw them that first Ramadan I spent in Egypt, now I notice them everywhere in the Gulf too.

Ramadan fanous in Ma'adi, Cairo. 

The origin of the Ramadan fanous is attributed variously - to a story dating to 968, when Muiz li Din Allah, the Fatimid Caliph entered the city of Cairo on the 15^th of Ramadan, and the residents greeted him with lamps. Another source puts it at Salahuddin’s conquest in the 12^th century, still others to a Fatimid Caliph who came between 10^th and 12^th centuries between these two leaders. However that may be, there’s no doubt the lamps go back centuries. They are still handmade and sold in the Cairene districts of Attaba and Sayeda Zainab, made lovingly from metal and coloured glass and decorated with calligraphy and Islamic motifs.  Nowadays cheaper mass-manufactured imports from China are a threat to these hand-crafted beauties. 

Ramadan fawaneis on sale at a shop in Khan el Khalil.

Ahdaf Soueif 

I’ve mentioned Ahdaf Souief before, probably several times. She’s an Egyptian short story writer, a novelist, essayist, columnist and a political commentator. She has been educated, and worked in London and Cairo, and has written columns both for the Guardian, UK and Al-Ahram, Egypt. The Map of Love is her second novel, an epic love story set in in 20^th century Egypt against the Nationalist Movement to free Egypt from the British. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker 1999.

I read it after I landed in Egypt, Soueif was the second Egyptian writer I read, (the first being Naguib Mahfouz of course, whose Cairo trilogy I’d read before I went to live in Cairo.) Unlike Mahfouz, whose work I can access only in translation, Soueif writes in English, the connect is more direct, more tactile. I am not distracted-anxious about whether I'm missing out on the nuances, what's lost in translation. She has an interesting voice, subtle, soft, skilful, romantic at times yet clear-sighted, a very Arab perspective underpinning her Western patina. She kind of borderlessly glides between her British and Egyptian selves, her English retaining the cadence of her native Arabic, which I happen to love. I’ve read several of her books, both fiction and non-fiction, and I’ve liked them all, some of her short stories are superb. She captures both the angst and the headiness of the third-culture experience brilliantly.

Here is an excerpt from one of her columns:

1923: Stepping down from the train in Cairo Central Station, Hoda Hanim Sha’rawi lifts her hand to the side of her face, undoes a golden clasp, and her fine white crepe de chine yashmak flutters to the ground. At that moment, the Turkish-style veil ceased to be de rigueur for Egyptian women of the upper class. Sha’arawi was handsome, wealthy, widowed and securely aristocratic, with powerful political connections through both her father and her husband. She had been in Rome on behalf of the Egyptian Women’s Union, a trip that was one more chapter in Egypt’s modernisation project. The gesture, at its final moment, resolved a debate that had occupied Egyptian society for almost thirty years.

Click here to read the rest of it.

And it's time again for the WEP! Come join and/or share!