Ramadan’s ‘Mesaharati’ Disappears from Sudan's Big Cities in Sudan, Remains Resilient in Countryside

Mesaharatis in Sudan (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Mesaharatis in Sudan (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Ramadan’s ‘Mesaharati’ Disappears from Sudan's Big Cities in Sudan, Remains Resilient in Countryside

Mesaharatis in Sudan (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Mesaharatis in Sudan (Asharq Al-Awsat)

A mesaharati, also known as “the Dawn Caller of Ramadan,” is a person who wakes others up before dawn to eat before their fast during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan.

The voluntary job has been around for generations but has gone missing in big Sudanese cities, where the more significant part of the population relies on social media and satellite channels to stay up late till Suhur on their own, without the need for a mesaharati.

Suhur is the meal consumed by Muslims before dawn breaks, and they start fasting during Ramadan.

In today’s Sudan, mesaharatis can only be found in the countryside, where the phenomenon is honored as a celebration of religious and cultural heritage in the North African nation.

“The countryside still enjoys calm nights and people there sleep early. It is as it was in the past,” said the President of the National Union for Folklore Heritage Salah El-Din Faragallah.

“Moreover, houses are built close to each other in the countryside,” he added.

Faragallah then explained that these factors help make it easier for the mesaharati to play their role.

Additionally, Faragallah links the survival of the mesaharati in the countryside to a local desire for preserving the traditional features of Ramadan.

He said the mesaharati gives those fasting in the countryside a sense of “activity and vitality,” especially when reciting rhymes and jokes while waking them up for Suhur.

In the few minutes when the mesaharati gets to do their job, the locals have an opportunity to relive their heritage, added Faragallah.

There is no specific age when a person can become a mesaharati, which is why you can find youths volunteering for the job in the Sudanese countryside.

On the matter of mesaharatis being exclusive to the countryside, Eziddine Omar, aged 19, argued that the dawn callers of Ramadan still made trips to the outskirts of Sudanese cities.



‘We Need Everything’: Gazans Ponder Mammoth Task of Rebuilding

 An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows Palestinians walking through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows Palestinians walking through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
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‘We Need Everything’: Gazans Ponder Mammoth Task of Rebuilding

 An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows Palestinians walking through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows Palestinians walking through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)

As bombs rained down and entire neighborhoods around her were pulverized, Shayma Abualatta found the only way to cope with the trauma of Gaza's 15-month-long war was to make sure she did all she could to get an education.

Now the 21-year-old, who is studying computer science and computer engineering, wants to use what she learned to help rebuild a land where the most basic lifelines have been severed and where everyone needs everything.

"I want to stay in my country, to stay where I am, to stay with my relatives and the people I love," she said.

As a fragile ceasefire takes hold in Gaza, Palestinians are beginning to think cautiously about rebuilding - a Herculean task when the entire 2.3 million population is homeless with many displaced multiple times.

During the conflict, Abualatta said the only way she could exercise some control over her life was to keep studying. But for the first three months of the war, she could not even bring herself to open her laptop. The first time she did, she cried.

"I felt like it was such a blessing to have the opportunity to achieve something," she said in a phone interview from central Gaza, where she had fled from air strikes in the north.

The Israeli military has laid to waste to much of Gaza in its campaign to eliminate Hamas in retaliation for the group's Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Gaza health authorities say at least 47,000 people have been killed in the conflict, with the rubble likely holding the remains of thousands more.

As well as freeing 33 of the 98 Israeli and foreign hostages still held by Hamas, the ceasefire deal requires Israel to allow 600 truckloads of aid into Gaza every day for six weeks.

"We need the border crossings to open without restrictions," Abualatta said. "We need everything."

Electricity is one of her main concerns. Every day she walks from the tent where she now lives to a local charging point where she can get online. With peace, she hopes more solar panels can be brought into the territory.

"We just need to clear the rubble and set up tents over them," she said. "We will start off the with tents and develop them slowly."

That might prove easier said than done.

SCALE OF CRISIS ‘UNIMAGINABLE’

The scale of the humanitarian crisis is "almost unimaginable", Alexandra Saieh of charity Save the Children, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, "multiple pressing crises are unfolding, and they are deeply interconnected".

Save the Children said it would prioritize sending food, water and medicine for children.

"The race is on to save children facing hunger and disease as the shadow of famine looms," Saieh said.

The United Nations says removing 42 million tons of rubble in Gaza could take more than a decade and cost $1.2 billion.

Fuel to power water desalination plants is also essential, said Vincent Stehli, head of operations at aid group Action Against Hunger. But repairing water networks would require items such as metal pipes that Israel currently bans entering Gaza.

Stehli said aid groups "cannot wait 10 or 15 years," until the rubble is cleared. "Reconstruction has to happen. Recovery has to happen to some of the key installations," he said.

Abualatta agrees. When her Gaza-based university suspended online classes, she sought out University of the People (UoPeople), a tuition-free, completely online university, and began taking computer science courses.

She expects to graduate next year.

UoPeople has raised $300,000 to pay for scholarships for students in Gaza, Shai Reshef, the university's president, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"If we get more money, we will get even more of them, as many as we as we have money for," he said.

But he said students could not wait till their schools and universities were rebuilt to get an education.

"What do you do with the kids? With the students? Teach them online," Reshef said.