COLOGNE – With his work starting at 7am, Ali Bouzaid spends the whole Ramadan day preparing typical Turkish and Arabic dishes and desserts in a small restaurant in the heart of the German city of Cologne. Bouzaid, a 25-year-old Iraqi, has been living and working in Germany for the past four years, but he never misses his country as he does during the holy fasting month of Ramadan. “It's quite different here,” Bouzaid told the Egyptian Mail, while busily serving his customers. “In our Arab countries, Ramadan means family gatherings for iftar [the fastbreaking meal] and the same daily style of life that everyone shares during this holy month. And that's what I miss the most.” Around 4.2 million Muslims celebrate Ramadan in Germany, 80 per cent of whom fast during the holy month, according to a recent German study. Bouzaid belongs to this majority exerting his utmost effort to keep the fast with the long day in his city of residence. Although this is his fourth Ramadan here, he is still challenged by the length of the day. “I have to work for around eight hours with food all around me while I'm fasting and then figure out how I can spend the remaining seven hours maintaining my fast.” In Cologne, like many other German and European cities, the fasting hours this year are significantly longer than those in Egypt and the Arab world – while Muslims in Egypt fasted for around 15 hours at the beginning of Ramadan, fasting hours here were around 18 hours. Unlike Bouzaid, Samar Wahbah, a Lebanese student staying in the city of Bonn near Cologne, is spending her first Ramadan apart from her family. Yet, she has a lot of reasons to be so happy about her fasting time here. “It's exciting how a lot of Germans recognise Ramadan,” Samar said happily. “On the first day of the month, our professor said in the class that this is the first day of the Muslims' fasting month and asked if any of us were actually fasting”. She remarked that “Although we are just two students out of 17 [who are fasting], everyone is just sensible and curious at the same time.” Ramadan's special treats The Muslim majority in Germany is of Turkish origins. Hence, for Muslims in Germany to find halal (religiously approved)food, Turkish shops are always the password. A few days before the start of Ramadan, the typical treats of the month, like dates, nuts and dried fruits, were on sale in Turkish shops throughout the country. Despite the variety of options being very limited compared to Egypt and that dates are just called dates – not humorously called after famous and infamous people, like the trend in Egyptian markets for the past couple of years, the Ramadan preparations were quite evident in shops. “Although I was quite disappointed when I compared what was offered in the shops here with what we have back home, I was delighted to find the special Ramadan dates in the German supermarket near my place,” Sally Mohamed, an Egyptian PhD student in Cologne, told this newspaper. The majority of German hypermarkets have put Ramadan special dates on sale before and during the holy fasting month. From the first day, the difference between spending Ramadan in an Arab country with the people's warm customs and the month's typical goods and in an European one is very marked, including the fasting hours and the daily routine during the fasting month. Sally's daily routine in Ramadan, like the majority of Muslims here, is very practical; she attends lectures, studies and works on her papers, reads the Qur'an and sleeps before the time of iftar, with nothing special to do after she has broken the fast. “This is the first year I didn't get a fanous [traditional Ramadan lantern in Egypt],” said the 28-year-old PhD chemistry student. “The call [to prayer] of the azan, people in the street serving you with dates at the time of iftar, charity tables and family gatherings are all part of Ramadan for me, a special part that is not anywhere else but back home.” “Here, I'm fasting for Ramadan, but back home I also used to celebrate it.
