by Mike Odetalla

Created on: September 20, 2007

Ramadan sparks memories of happy days in Palestine

The holy month of Ramadan and its fasting are once again upon us. Muslims will fast from sun up 'til sundown, abstaining from food, water and intimate relationships.
Each year around this time, my memories are rekindled of Ramadan in our small village of Beit Hanina, a suburb of Jerusalem still without electricity, where people carried lanterns to light their way in the darkness as they went first to the mosque and then to visit friends and family.

Beit Hanina had a drummer, charged with the pre-dawn task of awakening the village to sahoor, the light meal whose end marked the beginning of each day's fast. Closing my eyes and thinking real hard, still brings back the sound of Beit Hanina's drummer banging away, and the delightful memories of joining the other children, carrying our decorated fanoosia lanterns with candles burning brightly inside them, as we ran along behind the drummer, singing, laughing and shouting to help awaken the sleeping adults and start them on sahoor and their new day.

How I admired the drummer. How I wanted his job and to share in his fun.
During Ramadan in 1979, when I made my first visit back to Palestine since the 1967 expulsion, my cousin and I, both 18 and living in the U.S., finally became the Ramadan drummers of Beit Hanina. The Israeli invasion of 1967 and the subsequent occupation made the drummers' job very high risk and today they are scarce. Ramadan drummers were often stopped, even beaten, and some have been killed by the Israeli occupying army.

By 1979, the village had not enjoyed a drummer in five years, so my cousin and I delighted in our job of walking through the village each morning banging away on large tin cans. It must have been a very humorous sight. The elderly were happy to hear us, while the younger people thought we were a great joke and made fun of the "bored Americans."

But everyone agreed that we had renewed some "life" that had been lost as we broke through the dark still nights of Ramadan. For me, however briefly, I was transported back to a happy childhood whose memories had never left me for a moment.

I still remember sitting by the family's transistor radio with my siblings listening to the special programs as we awaited the "cannon" to go off, signaling that it was time to break our fast. The "cannon" was a World War I-era English relic and merely made a loud bang, which was all that it was good for.

Ever since my own children were very small, I had regaled

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