Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims, starts tomorrow. For some reason as this holy month approaches, every year, I end up picking up my Lane. And immediately I'm reading those passages of Manners and Customs of Modern Egyptians in which the author describes the rites and customs of our great grandfathers. It is astonishing how much information he managed to gather by direct observation of, and often active participation in, the day-to-day life of Egyptians.

I need not explain the background of the book or its author, since I have done so more than once before. Its immense historical value notwithstanding, my persistent attachment to Manners and Customs is due partly to the fact that I wrote the introduction to the 1945 Everyman edition -- a short text in which I said that there are few books on 19th-century Egypt that can be regarded as classics, and that the present book is certainly one of them -- an honour I still cherish.

But to go back to Ramadan as described by Lane. The author deals with the month in several different chapters, but it is the famous scene in "Periodical Public Festivals" that is worthy of review. Reading it one is reminded of the opening sentence in Hartley's novel The Go Between : "The past is a foreign country, they did things differently, then." Egyptians of the 19th century certainly did things differently; for them Ramadan was an occasion for showing a kind of intimacy that no longer exists, with both nuclear and extended families getting together as if to demonstrate the saying, "Eating is best in company", a notion that had even greater appeal in Ramadan.

In those days no household was free of guests, and hospitality was the call of the day: "In general, during Ramadan, the stool of the supper tray is placed in the apartment in which the master of the house receives his visitors, a few minutes before sunset. A japanned tray is put upon it, and on this are placed several dishes or large saucers containing different kinds of dried fruit." Following this "light refreshment", the master of the house and his guests "sit down to a plentiful meal of flesh-meat and other food, which they term breakfast, fatoor ". Such was the sense of togetherness that people ate out of the same plates throughout the meal, after which the master of the house would join his guests in prayers, incorporating "a certain additional prayer of Ramadan called el- taraweeh ".

During Ramadan, following the " fatoor ", people would visit friends and relations, or spend time in coffee shops, "either merely for the sake of society, or to listen to one of the reciters of romances or musicians who entertain the company at many of the coffee shops every night of this month". The streets of Cairo would be full of people for the greater part of the night, which, Lane tells us, "is thus turned into day". Lane also gives a detailed description of "the musahhirs " who went around waking people up for " sahoor ", the last meal before the fast begins. The musahhir knew the names of people in the " khutt " or small district in which he operated, and he would go around calling their names one by one.

But it is Lane's description of " Laylet el-Kadr ", the night when "the Koran is said to have been sent down to Mohamed", that is particularly thought-provoking. It is affirmed to be "better than a thousand months", he tells us, and on it the angels are believed to descend to convey blessings to the faithful. The "gates of heaven being then open, prayer is held to be certain of success". Lane believed it to be the 27th of the month, but since then as now no one knows for sure on which of the last ten days of Ramadan " Laylet el-Kadr " is, people "observed all those nights with great solemnity" -- a far cry from the television- centred frivolity with which they are observed now...