Ramadan in Gaza: Palestinians mourn erasure of rituals amid struggle for survival

Young Palestinian Amjad Joudeh’s happiest Ramadan memories are the walks he took with his father and brothers to the mosque for the special Tarawih prayers during the holy month. 

“We walked hand in hand to the mosque,” Amjad, 25, recalls as he sits at his partially destroyed house in northern Gaza City. 

“But this year, I am going alone,” Amjad, a trader, tells TRT World. 

For other Palestinians in the devastated enclave of Gaza, the Islamic holy month of fasting and prayers has brought back memories of what they have lost and what remains of their lives after two years of a genocidal war that has killed more than 70,000 people. 

Palestinians in Gaza and other occupied territories are observing Ramadan rituals under amid a fragile ceasefire that Israel continues to violate daily – carrying out indiscriminate military strikes and illegal settler incursions, and killing innocent civilians. 

In moments of reflection, Palestinians recall the quiet intimacy of shared worship during past Ramadans when Gaza’s mosques would fill each night for the Tarawih - a special night prayer performed exclusively during the holy month. 

Many of those mosques now lie in rubble, indiscriminately bombed by Israel over the past two years.

With intermittent airstrikes still haunting the people, public gatherings have shrunk dramatically, including communal prayers and family visits, which were once central features of the holy month.

Amjad lost his entire family – parents and four younger siblings – in a single air strike during the genocide. 

All that remains is a fractured house with walls scarred by shrapnel and memories that intensify as the call to the evening Maghrib prayer approaches each evening.

"All that surrounds me now is grief. I try to imagine my family celebrating Ramadan with me. I see their faces everywhere. The memories hurt, but they also keep me company."

In past years, Tarawih prayers were moments of connection. Suhoor and iftar was a time for laughter and conversation. This year, he barely cares what he eats.

"Now I know what it means to set a full table just for myself," he says. 

"My mother and sister would prepare soup and food an hour before sunset. My father would turn on the radio to Quran recitations. My brothers would argue over who would carry the plate of kanafeh,” he says, referring to the traditional sweet dish.

The ‘next week’ that never comes

Amid the ruins of Gaza, among tents and shattered homes, people are trying to preserve fragments of Ramadan’s rituals to observe the month as best they can. 

It does not always work. Many families have lost one or more members during the genocidal war. Still, they try. Holding on to Ramadan feels like holding on to life.

At the entrance of one tent near the coast of Gaza City sits 41-year-old Sanaa Al-Sharbase with her three children. She tries to explain why this Ramadan will not resemble those that came before. Her husband was severely injured during the war and can no longer work.

"He used to earn $800 a month," she tells TRT World. "Now he receives just $200 in assistance from his employer."

The family survives on this reduced income and humanitarian aid that barely covers food and medicine.

A thin string of handmade paper lanterns hangs along the sides of the worn tent. They are her quiet compromise, a soft attempt to convince her children that Ramadan has arrived.

"Every Ramadan, I would buy them lanterns, even small ones," she says. "I would hang decorations in the house. They weren’t luxurious, but they made the children happy. This is the first Ramadan that I haven’t bought any decorations.”

Decorations now cost five times what they used to.

"It breaks my heart when they ask, 'When will we buy the lanterns?' I don’t have a good answer for them.”

When her children asked if they could hang lights in the tent, she told them, "Next week." She knows fully well that the week will likely never come.

In Gaza, many families traditionally cook the traditional plant-based stew called molokhia and chicken on the first day of Ramadan. This year, Sanaa could not.

"I can't buy meat anymore," she says.

Her children may not fully understand economic hardship, but they sense the lack of joy. She tries to compensate by cooking without meat and stretching a few pieces of chicken breast as far as she can.

"Ramadan used to be about children. Now it’s about what’s missing,” she says.

Her husband sits silently in a corner of the tent. His injury has robbed him of his ability to speak. "The injury pains him," she says. "But what hurts more is his feeling of helplessness." 

Earlier in Ramadan, he delighted the children by granting them whatever they wished for.

To shield him from embarrassment, she tells the children that their father is "the strongest man in the world" and that he will return to work once he has recovered.

"Ramadan is still the month of giving," she insists. "We have beautiful memories …visiting relatives and exchanging plates of sweets and dishes. Now, we barely have enough to fill our own plate."

Who will make the sweets?

For Ihab Hassanein, 42, Ramadan has brought back painful memories of his wife, who passed away a couple of months ago, battling an illness complicated by treatment shortages and travel difficulties. 

Their fifteen years together had made the Ramadan table a witness to countless shared moments.

"I can’t imagine sitting at (iftar) without her," Ihab, a computer engineer, tells TRT World at his home in central Gaza. 

"She chose the dishes. She insisted that we all sit down before the call to prayer. She organised our lives the way they should be."

This Ramadan has a sharp, almost unbearable taste. Still, they try to endure.

His three children – aged 14, 12 and 9 – remain in denial.

"They avoid saying 'mom died'. So do I."

The first Ramadan without her reopens impossible questions.

"Does mama fast with us during Ramadan?" his 12-year-old daughter Retal asks. "Yes," he tells her. "And she eats (the sweet dish) qatayef at iftar."

He dreads the moment he raises his hands alone in supplication at sunset. They once shared prayers and exchanged glances of reassurance. Now, the chair opposite him will remain empty, bearing witness to an irreplaceable absence.

Still, he insists on trying.

"I will sit with my children. We will recite Al-Fatiha for her during every iftar and suhoor. I will tell them about our first Ramadan together and how we laughed when she put sugar instead of salt in the soup. I don’t want her to become just a photograph. I want her memory to remain alive in our lives."

This year, Ramadan in Gaza does not resemble what came before. It arrives after a war that shattered many memories. Yet, it has not entirely disappeared from the heart. 

For each family, Ramadan carries intimate details capable of awakening a fragile spirituality amid devastation.

Amjad is searching for a way to survive his solitude. Sanaa crafts lanterns from paper. Ihab is determined to keep his absent wife present in every sacred moment.

Their rituals have been disrupted or vanished. Yet, those small details still define what Ramadan has meant to them. 

The traditions may not come back. The chairs will likely stay empty. The loss does not fade. But people gather anyway, holding on to whatever remains.