This year holy-month festivity crawls in the shadow of inflation: Youssef Rakha pities the melancholy consumer Judging by the bulging sacks of dried fruit and nuts below glittering fawanees (Ramadan lanterns) all over the city, the casual observer would undoubtedly conclude that all is as it should be. As the holy month approaches, provisions for a paradoxically gluttonous 30 days are well under way; so are celebratory plans. Yet this year, to a greater extent than its predecessors of the last decade or so, Ramadan arrives with something of a glitch: there is not enough money to buy everything -- or indeed in some cases, anything -- that is required to complete the increasingly unaffordable rites and rituals of this sometimes peculiarly unholy time of the year. At some level this would seem to reflect divine justice, in that the month of fasting was originally intended as a time of purification, of shedding the mundane residue that accumulates over the clear screen of the soul through 11 months of conflict and toil, by renouncing bodily attachments. That such attachments are renounced from sunrise to sunset each day tends to serve as an excuse for mundane excess, however. Fasting is supposed to result in losing weight, yet the norm is for people to report that they have put on weight during Ramadan. And while the day is by and large reduced to a few hours of half-hearted work, Ramadan nights become increasingly commercialised feasts of the senses, with an extremely high concentration of relatively high-quality television programmes, frequent visits for iftar and suhour (the Ramadan meals) and outings to specially designed and often positively profane "Ramadan tents". However ironically just, though, the persistent inflation with which Egyptians have been plagued following the devaluation of the pound and the progressive rise of the US dollar is nothing to gloat at. Among its most obvious consequences is a significant increase in the number of beggars and conmen, even as the average Egyptian becomes increasingly strained financially. Even for those of us who are neither hungry nor homeless, enjoying the benefit of comfortable homes equipped with the adjuncts of modern consumerism -- television, phone, electric washing machine etc. -- inflation proves a difficult nut to crack as wage increases lag behind rising prices. In preparation for Ramadan, especially, the saddest aspects of this misfortune become broadly apparent. Shop displays notwithstanding, several shop owners told Al-Ahram Weekly that, in the face of much steeper prices, they were forced to reduce their stock this year. Even those who have enough money to buy the annual amount of Ramadan-specific foodstuffs chose not to in the expectation that, for the consumer, the prices of such Ramadan essentials as qamareddin and hazelnuts would increase by 50 to 100 per cent. Likewise the price of some basic foodstuffs like rice and flour -- which are even more essential during the holy month -- have doubled. Shop owners indicate that people stubbornly continue to buy food, and that the trend of rising food sales in the month or so prior to Ramadan has continued. Only, as one shop owner put it, "the quantities bought have dramatically decreased." Again the implication may be positive here, since the vast majority of people are known to buy, and consume, far more than they actually need. Yet there remains a gnawing sadness in the knowledge that such cuts are far from voluntary or that, rather than being due to a religious or moral obligation, they are in fact a consequence of circumstances beyond the relevant consumers' control. "It's hardly sad," one housewife told the Weekly over the phone, "but it's true the prices are very high this year, nar," she says, meaning "fire", common slang for extremely expensive. "I've already made up my mind. I have to buy stuff for the kids, to make them happy, of course. But I'll restrict my purchases to one kilo of [dried] dates, half a kilo of raisins, a quarter [dried] coconut, which is the Sunna (Prophet's way) anyway. But listen, there is one more thing you should know. Shops shouldn't make the stuff available as early as all that. As for myself I'm not buying anything till a day or two before the first day of Ramadan. But I know other people who are buying now. And the kids," she laughs bitterly, "they won't wait, will they. They'll eat it all now and then there'll be nothing left for Ramadan." One father, a government employee, expressed similar concerns, also over the phone, but admitted employing his own highly effective strategy to fight the costs of Ramadan: "The truth is that every day I take my wife and two children and we have iftar at mawa'id al-rahman," the free outdoor feasts offered every day by those who can afford it for others who cannot afford a decent iftar. "I choose one that is far from home, so that no neighbour or acquaintance will notice us. That way I save the money I would've spent on food for the kids' Eid clothes. That's how God sorts it out for us anyway. What else will we do? Well, Ramadan is a holiday from expenses -- and for my wife a holiday from the kitchen. Thank God there are kind people who provide this food, even though I have to say every year the quality of the food on offer is worse, but we get by. We can only be grateful. Yes, of course, we celebrate and have fun and we worship. It's a good time of year, it's the holy month, after all." A young bride explains that the business of iftar is her parents' or her in-laws' responsibility. "We've been catastrophically in debt since we got married, they're kind enough to help us out. All we do is buy suhour: two yogurt pots and a piece of cheese -- that's all we need. So prices don't really concern me at all. I just window shop." In the light of government announcements to the effect that the economy is under control -- prices, the government solemnly intones, should not get any higher than they are, and it is up to individual shop-owners not to raise them -- the testimony of a fanous maker seems even more upsetting than the conditions of the aforementioned people: "Prices have increased since last year, no doubt. And not as many people are buying fawanees this year. But parents still like to please their children with the fanous, even Christians buy them. The greatest number of fawanees being sold today are not Egyptian-made at all, though. The most popular are the Chinese, because they're inexpensive and they produce the sound of the azan (call to prayer) with the benefit of a little battery that costs next to nothing. The Chinese fanous, yes -- inexpensive, with the azan -- that's the one that sells."
