Eds. Note: This post is part of StepFeed's #YourRamadan campaign. The author is Abdel Kareem, a 25-year-old Syrian refugee/worker/student living in Beirut who recently got married in Lebanon. The post has been translated from Arabic.
This will be my third consecutive Ramadan in Lebanon, away from Syria. What’s the difference between Ramadan in Syria and Ramadan in Lebanon? There’s a huge difference.
In Syria, Ramadan was a month for worship, entertainment and gatherings. Every area of the country was marked by its own food and rituals.
But here in Lebanon, while I’m on my way to work, I don’t feel the spirit of Ramadan like I used to.
Not all of my coworkers are Muslims, and most of those who are do not fast, since it’s very difficult to fast during the long working hours. I see very few people who are fasting, and there are nearly no discussions about Ramadan and its rituals.
After a long day of working, I return home for a shower and relax for some time.
Then I help my wife prepare the food for iftar. We eat one or two food items of whatever we have at home, since our financial situation doesn’t allow us to have many kinds of food, drinks, juices and sodas as they’re pretty expensive.
Our iftar is normally made up of a Maggi soup, jallab and one cooked item. Sometimes we have a salad on the side.
In Syria, it was very different for us. We had a dining table full of diverse foods, desserts, and different kinds of salads and drinks. We used to have raw kebbe at iftar every day in Syria, but due to the high meat prices in Lebanon, we can’t afford that.
In Syria, we spent the majority of Ramadan having gatherings and inviting friends, family and neighbors to iftar.
Every day, I think about inviting my friends over at iftar, but then I change my mind because inviting them over would cost me too much.
Instead, my wife and I have iftar all by ourselves, from food we cook ourselves. In Syria, neighbors used to share and exchange their meals.
When we’re done with the meal, I sit and watch some television. I don’t watch many series, just one series and after that I watch the news since my country’s situation pushes us to watch the news and political talk shows more than drama and entertainment shows.
Later, whenever I can, I call my family in Syria. We discuss many things: what they’ve done today, how’s the atmosphere there, what they had for iftar. We talk until it's midnight, and then begin to prepare for suhoor.
For suhoor, we eat labneh and cheese with some olives and cucumbers, just like people eat traditionally in Syria.
Then I go to sleep, before a new work day starts, a day that is undistinguishable from any other day here in Lebanon.
At the end of the week, on Saturday night, I go out with my wife and friends to Raouche or Ain al Mreisseh for a break from the work routine. We talk about spending Ramadan in Lebanon – all of our discussions are about what we miss back home and what we used to love in Syria, and the women speak about their favorite Syrian dishes, how they are cooked, and about their memories of our villages, our nights and how different Syrian Ramadan rituals are from the ones in Lebanon.
We stay up until 3 a.m. until it’s time to stop eating. We then leave, and everyone returns to their own homes.
I wake up on Sunday late because it’s a day off, particularly since it follows a long Ramadan night.
On Sunday night, I spend the evening with my wife’s family; we gather and have iftar together. It’s a Syrian tradition that we spend time with family on Sundays and have several meals on the table.
There’s no real difference between the discussions I have with friends and those I have with my wife’s family. The topics are always the situation in Syria, Ramadan away from home, our hope to return and whether we will be in the same situation if we return.
At almost 11 p.m., I return with my wife to our home. A new working week begins – a routine that doesn’t change for Ramadan, a very different Ramadan than the one we used to spend in Syria.