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The basic outlines of the Ramadan fast are familiar to all practicing Mus-
lims. During the month of Ramadan Muslims are to refrain during day-
light hours from eating, drinking, and sex (indeed, all activities that in-
volve introducing a substance into the body, including smoking, snuf¤ng
tobacco or other substances, and injection). Certain categories of people are
legitimately excused from the fast, such as pregnant women, young chil-
dren, and the physically in¤rm, whose health would be harmed by not eat-
ing; travelers; and combatants in a war. Of course the observance of Rama-
dan does not always adhere strictly to an unchanging and abstract ideal.
Just as American celebrations of Christmas have changed enormously, so
too have practices associated with the observance of Ramadan evolved in
response to new cultural and material realities. For many people the quiet
contemplation during Ramadan of values such as piety and humility con-
stitute the meaning of the ritual. Virtually nobody opposes the contempla-
tive character of Ramadan in the abstract. Nonetheless Ramadan has, in
certain times and places, become associated with a wide range of values
and practices. Among these local Ramadan practices are new habits of con-
sumption and consumerism.
336 / Performance and Entertainment
It is this new consumerism and forms of mass media which concern
me here. The centerpiece of this essay is a description and analysis of a
television program called Fawazir Ramadan (fawazir means “riddles”; the
singular is fazzura). The program tells a riddle each night of the month of
Ramadan. The riddle is not just stated, but is enacted in lavish song-and-
dance routines broadcast roughly an hour after the iftar, the breaking of
the fast just after sundown. Currently there are many other fawazir pro-
grams on the air; the original Fawazir Ramadan is Egyptian, and for at least
the past two decades it has been a post-iftar dance extravaganza.
I hypothesize that the fawazir program promotes a “Christmas-like” as-
sociation of materialist mass consumption with cultural value. Fawazir
Ramadan has been increasingly tied to the promotion of the interests of
multinational corporations, as well as those of the state. The most obvious
manifestation of these interests is the lucrative prizes given to those who
guess the correct answers to all the riddles. In 1990 the prize for Fawazir
Ramadan was LE 30,000 (then approximately $10,000), offered by the pro-
gram’s main sponsors, Noritake China and the Fitihi Center (a shopping
mall) in Jidda. A 1994 riddle program broadcast from the United Arab
Emirates paid as much as 30,000 dirhams (also about $10,000) per ques-
tion. In both cases commercial and political sponsorship have transformed
what began as entertainment for children to something considerably more
complex.
a n o n - i s l a m i c r a m a da n p ro g r a m
The prescribed fast . . . make[s] people realize the hardships which others
endure for lack of sustenance for their life. Only those who themselves un-
dergo the hardship of hunger and thirst can understand the miseries of
those who, in spite of labor, are not able even to meet their basic needs. This
naturally induces people to help others in need and to abstain from hoard-
ing wealth. (Ali 1995, 7)
The Riddle of Ramadan / 337
A Pakistani scholar made this statement, but it conforms to widespread
Islamic understandings of the signi¤cance of fasting. The fast is not meant
to be an extreme form of asceticism, nor is it a mere reversal of normal
activities. One is not supposed to simply sleep during the day (which of
course would greatly ease the discomfort of fasting) and stay awake at
night.
In practice, of course, peoples’ daily routines are often interrupted. In
the days leading up to the 1999–2000 Ramadan fast one person posted to
an Internet newsgroup an announcement published in the Egyptian paper
al-Ahram: “The working hours for all governmental agencies during the
month of Ramadan will be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. ¤ve days a week, Thursday
and Friday holiday. The Cabinet will con¤rm the decision tomorrow” (al-
Ahram, December 12, 1999). The poster of this message followed it with a
plan for what he described as a “realistic” work day: 9:00–9:30 arrival; 9:30–
10:00 chat; 10:00–12:00 “work”; 1:30–2:00 leave. His intent in posting such
a “schedule” was obviously ironic, but such jokes point to the gap between
real-life behavior and the “meaning of Ramadan.” Certainly, for many
Muslims, anything that could be considered excess during the month of
Ramadan, even during the non-fasting hours, is to some degree reprehen-
sible. One can, with very little effort, ¤nd Internet sites about Ramadan
that clearly disapprove of eating to excess during the night. Here is one
example:
Excessive intake of food is avoided (this regulates the stomach from being
pot-bellied and distinguishes Muslims from kaa¤r whom Qur#an describes
as those who eat like cattle (47:12)); etc. All these good things which Rama-
dan fast teaches Muslims are the means to attain piety. This is why the
verse on Ramadan fast says: “O ye who believe, fasting is prescribed for you
. . . so that you will (learn how to attain) piety” (2:183). (As-Sunna Founda-
tion 2001)
Ladies and gentleman, happy holidays. The Nasr Company for Middle
Chemicals gives you its best wishes for the blessed month of Ramadan. Each
day of the month, after the Arabic serial, the company presents to you a car-
toon riddle. The Nasr Company for Middle Chemicals offers valuable prizes:
—hajj and umra tickets [for pilgrimages to Mecca]
—a color television
—an automatic washing machine
—a four-burner stove
—ten bicycles
—¤ve tape players
—one hundred prizes from among the products of the Nasr Company for
Middle Chemicals
Before we tell you the riddle we’ll see it together in a cartoon. Pay close
attention, because the solution to the riddle is contained in the drawing.
Then comes a series of cartoons, which the audience sees being drawn in
fast motion, punctuated by shots of the cartoonist smiling at the camera.
The cartoons represent a certain kind of food being eaten in humble cir-
cumstances. The riddle is absurdly easy. The ¤rst thing the cartoonist draws,
in fact, is some letters being pulled out of a ful (bean) pot and formed into
the words ful sadiqi (“beans are my friend”). Anyone who is minimally lit-
erate thus learns the answer immediately. One might surmise that the goal
of the program is entertainment for young children. On the other hand,
one wonders just what a toddler would do with the prizes. A four-year-old
winning hajj tickets? A four-burner stove?
After the cartoonist is through, Fayza Hasan comes back on and restates
the riddle in a poem:
After restating the riddle she tells the audience the terms of the contest:
“We hope the riddle is easy, and we wait for you to send the answers to
Egyptian television. Don’t forget to attach to the answers two proof-of-pur-
chase coupons for products from the Nasr Company for Middle Chemicals.
The company wishes you good luck.”
One thing that can be easily inferred from this program is that fawazir
put a premium on localized imagery. They are often tied, with varying de-
grees of explicitness, to efforts to construct imagined communities. I think
this is true even of the far more elaborate fazzura that I will describe below.
interlude
Before Fazzura Ramadan, which is the main event of the immediate post-
iftar period, comes an advertising interlude. In Egyptian television, as in
most of the world other than the U.S., advertising occurs between shows,
not during them. In the early and middle 1990s, when I was watching
Egyptian television most often, advertising intervals could last up to half
an hour.
Egyptian advertising production is far different from American. In the
mid-1990s I witnessed the production of the sound track for a television
advertisement for chocolate-covered croissants. The creative process began
with a musician in his recording studio playing various tunes on his syn-
thesizer for an advertising agent until the agent heard one that he liked.
The winner proved to be Chubby Checker’s “The Twist.” Next a singer was
brought in and words were made up on the spot about a sad man dragging
himself through his morning until eating a delicious chocolate-covered
croissant, at which point the “Twist” music kicked in. It took about an hour
and a half for the studio owner, in consultation with the advertising agent,
to ¤ne-tune the lyrics, and for the singer to perform it to everyone’s satis-
faction. The tape was made and sent on to the television studio, where
someone else would have the responsibility of creating visuals to go with
the music.
My studio-owner informant insisted that the process of making adver-
340 / Performance and Entertainment
tisements such as this was every bit as haphazard as it appeared. According
to him, one of the main reasons for such quick-and-dirty (and presumably
very cheap) productions is that the state does not permit marketing re-
search. He told me disdainfully that the advertising executives had abso-
lutely no idea whether their commercials really worked. He believed that
for many of the companies who advertised on television the advertise-
ments were entirely a product of vanity. If true, this suggests that the ad-
vertising industry in Egypt is organized very differently from that of the
U.S. Television advertising time in the U.S. is an expensive high-stakes
game. Why invest in advertising if its effectiveness is dubious? This makes
one wonder how much can be assumed about the value of advertising dur-
ing “prime-time” viewing hours in Egypt. Indeed, my impression is that
the advertising on Egyptian television is always roughly the same through-
out the day. But con¤rming or rejecting such an impression must await
both a more systematic survey of advertising and interviews with those
who do the programming.
Audience reaction to advertising would also be a natural concern of a
future ¤eld research project. In the mid-1980s, when I ¤rst began spending
time in Egypt, I often heard that many people considered the advertising
segments more interesting than of¤cial programming. At the time it was
said that advertising on local television was still to some degree a novelty
—a product of the economic in¤tah (“open door” policy) initiated in the
1970s. If it was ever true that advertising segments were something of an
event in and of themselves, I doubt it is true now, in the much more adver-
tising-saturated media environment of the present.
* * *
About twenty minutes of advertising come between the rather low-
budget fawazir program described above and the much more elaborate and
expensive Fawazir Ramadan described below. The ads begin just after the
"isha#—the evening call to prayer. Although most of the advertisements
were not tailored speci¤cally to Ramadan, their placement relative to the
prayer times appears to be deliberate (at any rate, this is my working hy-
pothesis until I can conduct more ¤eld research). During the non-Ramadan
year calls to prayer come in the middle of ¤lms, dramatic serials, news
broadcasts, and advertising intervals. Whatever happens to be on will be
interrupted. But post-iftar television is scheduled around certain ¤xed
points:
1) the maghrib call to prayer, which marks the end of the daily fast;
2) the "isha# call to prayer, which occurs a certain time later (roughly
an hour and a half, depending on the length of time between twilight and
evening at a given latitude);
3) the Fawazir Ramadan program, which airs after the "isha#.
The Riddle of Ramadan / 341
Fawazir Ramadan marks the end of the segment because for many people it
is only after it that visits to friends and neighbors commence.
In Cairo the end of the daily fast was customarily signaled by a cannon
blast (now broadcast on television and radio), which announced the time
of the maghrib prayer, after which the iftar food is served. Many people
implicitly synchronize their television watching to ritual time. In effect,
the overall structure of the post-iftar television segment facilitates a tran-
sition from fasting time to “normal” time. Fawazir Ramadan—the program
that, as we will see, features imagery that is not just non-religious, but ag-
gressively secular—occurs after the day’s last call to prayer. From the "isha#
until the next day’s fajr prayer people have the greatest possible license to
indulge in activities forbidden during the fast.
* * *
The television segment I am describing here begins just before the "isha#
prayer and continues to Fawazir Ramadan. The child-oriented (but highly
commercialized) cartoon fazzura described above comes ¤rst. Between that
program and the adhan call to prayer there is a brief interval. This interval
is ¤lled not by advertising but by a religious song. Although I am fairly
sure I have heard it sung outside of Ramadan, I can only describe it as a
“Su¤ Christmas carol.” Its lyrics are perfectly ordinary:
This is sung by a woman who wears a scarf over part of her light brown
hair—not a hijab, or at least not one worn as most women wear them. As
she sings the image of her face fades to scenes of a Su¤ order circling a
tomb (the tomb in Cairo of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn,
which is particularly revered by Egyptian Su¤s). It is an unusual Arabic
song in that its arrangement includes a harmony, which makes it sound
like a Christmas carol. The song ends with the shahada (witness to the
unity of God) sung in harmonized rounds, suggesting pealing bells far
342 / Performance and Entertainment
more than it suggests either Quranic recitation or any conventionally Ara-
bic style of music.
This Christmasized, harmonized, and lavishly orchestrated Su¤ song
performed by a woman wearing a hijab incorrectly is clearly intended as a
transition to the call to prayer. In many ways the Su¤ song is an expres-
sion of the state’s vision of a domesticated, “modernized,” and non-oppo-
sitional Islam. The buffering function of the song is clear from the fact that
the adhan cuts the song off. Although during normal television program-
ming the adhan can occur anywhere, during Ramadan there is greater sen-
sitivity to juxtaposing religious discourse with the highly commoditized
post-iftar discourse.
The actual call to prayer in this case is quite long (during normal pro-
grams it can be as minimal as a window inserted into one corner of the
screen showing ¤rst a clock, then whichever adhan it is time for. It includes
¤lmed scenes of pilgrims circumambulating the Ka"ba and recitation of a
hadith (teaching) appropriate to the ritual occasion. After the call to prayer
comes more buffering material, at least in the sense that the viewer still
sees a state-sanctioned message. It is, however, a message that not only
buffers sacred language (the call to prayer and the recitation of a hadith)
from the profane world of commercialism but also, perhaps, bene¤ts from
the proximity of both. It is a family planning advertisement, a compilation
of scenes from a number of other such ads: a kind of “best of” selection
orchestrated by an authoritative white-jacketed female doctor ¤gure. Then
follow other gradual steps toward the outright profane, beginning with an
ad for Bank Faysal al-Islami. This is one of the few ads speci¤cally tailored
to Ramadan. It extols the bank’s charity work and gives holiday greetings
to the audience. After it comes a slightly anomalous ad for wedding dresses
by Abudi—anomalous because the religious portion of the advertising seg-
ment is not quite over. There is, however, still a connection between the
product (wedding dresses) and the season (Ramadan). People do not gen-
erally marry during Ramadan, because it would be improper for the newly-
weds to engage in intercourse during the fasting hours. But a spate of wed-
dings typically occur just after the completion of the fast, hence the sale of
wedding dresses can be seen as connected to Ramadan. This is followed
by a quick spot for volumes of religious commentary by a thirteenth-cen-
tury Islamic scholar, Tafsir al-Qurtubi. On twentieth-century Egyptian
Ramadan television, al-Qurtubi ¤nds himself sandwiched between Abudi
wedding dresses and an ad for crystal chandeliers.
From al-Qurtubi on to the end of the advertising segment all the ads
are completely secular and very materialistic. Chicken bullion, al-Ahram
locks, Toshiba VCRs, Riri baby formula, the Fil¤la restaurant; then a de-
lightful Meatland advertisement in which chickens and cows cluck and
moo to the tune of the 1812 Overture as their carcasses are ef¤ciently hacked
The Riddle of Ramadan / 343
up in a clean industrial packing plant; juice concentrate; corn oil; smoker’s
toothpaste; more wedding dresses; more crystal chandeliers. An intriguing
Juhayna Yogurt ad in which a cow metamorphoses into a beautiful spin-
ning woman. A perfume ad showing a woman going out on a date (or
perhaps the man shown picking her up in a spiffy red sports car is her
brother?). Sa"d cars. And ¤nally the advertising segment ends.
Nelli, the main performer in the episode I analyze here, was described
by the announcer as “the revue-show artiste.” She is essentially a dancer,
though not in the “oriental” or “belly-dancing” style. Nelli, though viva-
cious and often presented in form-¤tting out¤ts, is considered by Egyp-
tians I met to be more “cute” than “sexy.” She has an obvious ®air for com-
edy and a special appeal to children. She is also getting too old to be the
main fannana isti"radiyya of Fawazir Ramadan. Others have tried their
hand, but few have had as much success as Nelli.
Each year Fawazir Ramadan has a theme. It is always secular—for ex-
ample, folk proverbs or tales from A Thousand and One Nights. In the pro-
gram I discuss the theme is “paper”—birth certi¤cates, graduation diplo-
mas, marriage licenses, etc. It is a playful swipe at the bureaucratization of
everything in the life of an individual. A surreal introductory dance seg-
ment—the longest part of the show—shows Nelli dressed in a luxuriant
variety of out¤ts. She dances with such glitzy companions as a male en-
semble clad in sparkly-blue overalls (they look like the Village People), a
Turkish pasha, and a ®eet of baby carriages pushed by chic women. All the
while she sings about “"alam wara#a wara#a wara#a” (“world of paper, paper,
paper”). She ends the introductory segment dressed as a gypsy. Speaking
in a heavy pseudo-gypsy accent, she then tells the riddle to a different
character each night. In this episode, the riddle is told to a sea captain—the
captain of the Love Boat, apparently. Nelli asks the riddle (“What paper
does one need?”), then enacts it as a stowaway on the Love Boat, ending
the spectacle dancing in a ballroom with the captain. Then Nelli returns
to her gypsy persona and restates the riddle:
The easiest and most tempting way to abuse the idea of invented traditions
may be to believe that if a tradition is “invented,” it is somehow tainted, not
really authentic. . . . There are several reasons why such a belief is false. But
the most important of them is that it is based on a profoundly questionable
assumption—that before there were “invented” traditions there were “real”
ones that were not invented. (Nissenbaum 1996, 315)
references
Ali, Syed Anwer. 1995. “Setting the Goal of the Prescribed Fast.” In Ramadan: Mo-
tivating Believers to Action: An Interfaith Perspective, ed. Laleh Bakhtiar, 4–10.
Chicago: The Institute for Traditional Psychoethics and Guidance.
Nissenbaum, Stephen. 1996. The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s
Most Cherished Holiday. New York: Vintage Books.
As-Sunna Foundation of America. 2001. “Why Do Muslims Fast?” http://sunnah.org/
ibadaat/fasting/fast.html. February 9.