In besieged and starving Gaza, Ramadan charity and prayers endure

Standing outside her tent by a Rafah school, waiting with her grandson for a meal handout to arrive, Aida Ikhzaiq can barely believe how much has changed this Ramadan.

Like most Gazans marking the holy month, she has gone from sprawling banquets with extended family to a modest meal with the immediate family members who are still alive.

“Last Ramadan, I was in my house [in Gaza City], which I owned,” she says.

“This Ramadan, my daughter Henem was killed. My son was injured after we moved to the south. My other daughter is in north Gaza. Many cousins have been lost,” she says. “Our only Ramadan tradition [left] now is fasting.”

Across the Gaza Strip, families like hers are breaking their daylong fasts with dates, cans of fava beans, or soup handed out as aid. There is little food to follow.

“Everything is flavorless,” Ms. Ikhzaiq says of the food, and of the holiday.

Ramadan – a month marked by Muslims across the world with daytime fasting, followed by an evening of food, sweets, prayer, and charity – had continued in Gaza even at the height of the last four Israel-Hamas wars and amid a stifling 17-year Israeli and Egyptian blockade.

Now, amid the severest of shortages, demolished homes, 1.5 million displaced people, and a growing famine, Palestinians in Gaza are observing Ramadan with fasting and prayers, while missing family and fearing for the future. Yet one holiday tradition has not only endured but grown this Ramadan: charity.

Praying in a tent

The hub of prayer gatherings in Gaza City, the Great Omari Mosque, once hosted thousands nightly in Ramadan. The largest and among the oldest mosques in Gaza, it was destroyed by an Israeli missile in December.

Most of the surviving mosques in Gaza, where men and women would pray shoulder to shoulder in gatherings that would spill out into the streets, are empty. Many have stopped the Ramadan evening tarawih prayers altogether to avoid mass casualties should they be hit with an Israeli missile or mortar.

Instead, Gazans are praying with their immediate family members in tents.

“Ramadan serves as a period of education, teaching us the virtues of endurance, perseverance, and patience,” says Aayid Abu Hasanein, a Rafah imam. “We are determined to make the best out of it and do what we can do.”

One exception has been Mr. Abu Hasanein’s Al Huda Mosque in Rafah, which was hit by Israeli missiles in February.

Volunteers have cleaned up debris and the mosque carpet for people who wish to pray. A couple hundred people make their way here each day for prayers this Ramadan, down from 1,600 during previous Ramadans.

Keeping open a house of faith that may once again be targeted in a war is a moral dilemma, Imam Abu Hasanein admits.

“I cannot ask people to come. Yet I also cannot tell them not to come,” Mr. Abu Hasanein says.

Bittersweet

Rani Wafi, owner of Al Nada Confectionary candy factory and shop, has been displaced from his home in Khan Yunis to a tent in Rafah. Yet he continues to sell sweets this Ramadan – now as a laborer at the Al Tour Confectionary Shop.

Amid shortages of food items and the wartime economy, the price of the shop’s famous borma fingers, cheese wrapped in phyllo dough and soaked in a sugary syrup, has jumped from $2 to $12, out of reach for most Gazans.

“People have little desire to indulge in sweets, but many children approach me and plead for free treats,” Mr. Wafi says. “When people hear the price of a small tray, they immediately move on.”

Baker Abu Shady Abu Shanab’s nearby table offers freshly baked qatayef – slightly undercooked doughy pancakes that customers stuff with cheese or dates and fry or bake at home.

One kilogram, or about 2 pounds, of qatayef has jumped in price from $1.35 last year to more than $5 this month.

“I didn’t have high expectations,” the baker says. “Everything is expensive this Ramadan.”

Charity lives on

If Gazans are short on food and safety this Ramadan, charity and generosity are in abundance.

Under the plastic canvas of a greenhouse in a disused plant nursery in Deir al-Balah, Abu Hamza al-Nabahin cuts a carton full of onions and soaks rice for the next meal for thousands.

This is his tikiya, a charity kitchen to feed disadvantaged people and travelers, a concept from the earliest days of Islam.

Once used to feed only the most impoverished of Gaza, tikiyas like this have popped up during the war and grown this Ramadan, funded by both international aid agencies and local businesspeople. These kitchens are lifelines for tens of thousands of families across Gaza.

With a desire to help those around him, Mr. Nabahin founded this tikiya in late October in his hometown of al-Mughraqa, outside Gaza City, using his merchant connections and his own stock to supply food.

“I looked for what people needed. It was food that people needed the most,” he says.

Displaced by the war and now living in a tent, he moved the tikiya here, to Deir al-Balah, where he feeds 8,000 people on the brink of starvation every day.

“The Prophet – peace be upon him – used to feed the poor and needy,” Mr. Nabahin says as he aligns cans of chickpeas for the next day’s meals. “This is the best time to show support and feed people at a time they are really lacking food.”

His volunteers hover over 30 giant pots from early morning to afternoon, cooking up meals for thousands as well as for two evacuee centers. Before sunset and the fast-breaking iftar meal, recipients line up holding their pots and pans.

Mr. Nabahin uses the limited available ingredients to serve up the heartiest food he can: stews of white kidney beans and lentils; rice and peas; eggplant and lentils with pomegranate molasses. He has secured dozens of flour sacks from his merchant colleagues to keep his tikiya going.

Finding fuel is another hurdle; Gaza’s economy ministry occasionally provides him with gas cylinders, but occasionally he has to resort to the exorbitant black market.

As Ms. Ikhzaiq stands in front of her tent in Rafah, a volunteer from a local tikiya finally arrives with their meal.

A man in a black shirt rumbles up in a red tuk-tuk with two large cooking pots in tow. Young children and women immediately line up with plastic jars, metal cans, and pots before the sunset prayer.

Today’s meal? White beans in red tomato soup. Again.

“Yeekh,” Ms. Ikhzaiq’s grandson says, scrunching up his face. “Again? It’s not tasty.”

She holds her grandson.

“When we go back to Gaza City,” she vows, “I will cook whatever you want.”

Taylor Luck contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.