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Living in Yemen: Ramadhan month

I started the blog this Ramadhan, and now when I'm writing still also in Ramadhan. So I might as well write about this blessed month and how it affects the Yemenis.

Ramadhan is the holiest month in Islam. In this 9th of the lunar month, the muslims are obliged to perform fasting - that is to refrain from drinking, eating and sex from dawn to dusk - a full month. 

The muslim countries in Ramadhan usually will be more livelier at night. Such as in my country, Indonesia. More shops, food stands or night markets opened at night and there will be shopping frenzies.

Same with Yemen. Only that in Yemen, the night is EXTREMELY lively because from dawn to afternoon everybody is sleeping.

The road and street would be empty from dawn to afternoon. Then slowly people will crawl to their workplaces, or opening their shops after 4 pm, but still kinda empty. And you will rarely see the women, not because they are forbidden to go out, but they are busy preparing their household for meals of breaking fast and dinner.

After 9 o'clock at night, the street would be filled with pedestrian but the party have just started. At 10 o'clock, the street will be packed jammed with pedestrians. The women have just finished their chores and going out with their friends and the street full of them. The ratio is 10:1, one is for the men. The later the night, the more jammed the street.

My wife and I went to this mall at 10 pm, when we finished from the stores around 1 am we saw a sea of black dressed women filling the mall. My wife really shocked because it's the first time she went outside at Ramadhan night in the city (before we lived in a small village in desert). When we came out from the mall, the street really jammed and lively. All stores are full of customers mostly women. At this rate I might say the ratio between women and men on the street is 20 to 1.

So the Yemenis don't sleep at the night of Ramadhan. The men goes to work, the women goes shopping, and the children are playing outside their houses from night to dawn.

How about the mosque? At all prayer times, especially the dawn prayer, the mosque will be really full just like a friday prayer, except for afternoon prayer (dzuhr) because a lot of people are overslept.

I'm writing this semi-report at Mukalla City, where the war doesn't reach this part of country. As for Sana'a part, I had Ramadhan over there in 2013. It's the same like in Mukalla, only that afternoon in Sana'a also packed jammed with people in the street.

I hope the war will be over soon.


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