Violence pushes Ramadan aside

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, is drawing to a close. But for many Iraqis, it never really began.

One by one, 1,000-year-old rituals have fallen by the wayside this year, lost to the sectarian violence that has paralyzed this city.

There was majinah, an Iraqi version of trick-or-treat. Cloistered in their homes this year, most children were too scared to play the ancient game.

And the damams, drummers who serve as human alarm clocks, waking the neighborhood for a meal before the day-long Ramadan fast begins. The streets are no longer safe for them, either.

And mehebbes, the Iraqi national pastime played only during the holy month, in which two neighborhood teams compete long past midnight to divine the location of a tiny ring. Most matches were canceled because of a four-month-old curfew.

“Everything has been taken from us, and now our Ramadan has been stolen, too,” said Faraj Thabid Aziz, 54, who is too afraid to leave his home after 2 p.m., even to go to the mosque. He will not organize a traditional Eid al-Fitr meal to celebrate the end of Ramadan. “It would be like having a false celebration, a false joy.”

The sense of despair is yet another example of how the Sunni-Shiite warfare not only kills at least 100 Iraqis every day, but also cripples the lives of survivors.

The beginning of the holy month began with a dispute emblematic of the widening gulf between the sects. Although the Sunnis began fasting on Sept. 23, followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, did not start until two days later. During the rule of Saddam Hussein, the government declared when Ramadan began and most residents of the capital followed its decree.

The chief spokesman for the government, Ali al-Dabbagh, a Shiite, held a luncheon on the day most Sunnis began observing Ramadan and declared, in the presence of at least one fasting Sunni, that it was improper to begin the holiday so early. “This is just politics,” he said. Some Sunnis, of course, say the same thing about the Shiites.

As recently as last year, Ramadan evenings in Baghdad were elaborate celebrations that often lasted until dawn. Iraqis would break fast at the homes of friends or relatives, head to the mosque for prayers and religious lectures and then sit outside for hours.

Now few people want to stay on the streets after the 9 p.m. curfew the government imposed on Baghdad in June. Besides, most people try to avoid large gatherings, for fear of becoming targets for suicide bombers.

Sadeq al-Zair, imam of a mosque in the capital’s Karrada district, said attendance at nightly Ramadan services has plummeted from about 200 people last year to 60 people this year. Most of the mosque’s lectures have been canceled. When asked whether Ramadan would be better next year, Zair sounded doubtful.

“We have a saying now in Iraq: Yesterday is better than today, and today is better than tomorrow,” he said.

One of the oldest Ramadan traditions is the damam, a trained drummer who rouses residents by banging instruments so observant Muslims can eat a hearty meal before the sun rises and their fast begins. Damams, who believe their craft dates back a millennium, are often fourth- or fifth-generation practitioners of the art.

But never before has the ritual been so dangerous. Ali Mohammed Hussein, 25, a car electrician from the capital’s Bayaa district, said the damam in his neighborhood was gunned down two weeks ago. Damams in other neighborhoods say they will go out only with the protection of guards toting AK-47 assault rifles. And Mohammed Abdul Satar Lateef, 39, was recently arrested by the American military while drumming because the troops did not understand what he was doing, his family said.

“All of our traditions will soon vanish, and we will only hear about them in history books,” said his brother Ahmed, 38, a grocery clerk.

Noor al Din Ali, a pudgy 11-year-old who likes to ride his red bicycle, said the worst part of this Ramadan is that he cannot play majinah, a version of trick-or-treat in which children go on a door-to-door search for candy while singing:

Open the bag and give us!

You give us or we give you!

To Mecca we will take you!

If they’re in luck, the youngsters get candy. If they’re not, and the family has no treats, the children get doused with water. This year, though, Noor’s parents won’t let him out of the house for majinah or anything else. “It is ruining my Ramadan,” he said. “We want to go play in the streets.”

“Last year, we were not afraid,” said his 9-year-old sister, Gadeer Ali, who loves to play hopscotch. “But this year we are afraid. There are a lot of car bombs. I want security to come back and no terrorists. And no helicopters in the sky, either.”

The elderly are equally despondent. Abu Dawood, 67, one of the most famous mehebbes players in Iraq, said he still cannot believe it is too dangerous to play the game in the streets, like he has nearly every Ramadan evening for the past half-century.

Traditionally, the game is played late at night between two teams made up of about 30 players from different neighborhoods. A tiny ring is placed in the hand of one of the 30 players, and the captain of the opposing team – using only his powers of observation – has to guess who is holding the ring and in which hand. How do they do it? “That’s the secret of the game,” Abu Dawood said with a smile.

This year, though, most evening matches have been canceled. Instead, a championship tournament is being held in the bowels of the Babylon Hotel during the afternoon and rebroadcast at night by a satellite television channel.

As he wandered around the bright lights of the set on a recent afternoon, Abu Dawood shook his head. “It just feels wrong,” he said. “This isn’t the way Ramadan is supposed to be.”

Ahmed Abdul Satar Lateef, the brother of the damam arrested by the U.S. military, said the bloodletting has improved the holiday in one way: More young people than ever are fasting.

“The young believe they are close to death and might die any minute, so they want to fast and pray in the mosque to be closer to God,” he said. “It is the only beautiful thing to see in Baghdad these days.”