31.

The Riddle of Ramadan:

Media, Consumer Culture,
and the “Christmasization”
of a Muslim Holiday
Walter Armbrust

Religious ritual is often accompanied by much secular activity.

For instance, the pilgrimage to Mecca occurs in the context of a
traveling group, and prayers at the mosque may often be followed
by a chat about the day’s events. So also, fasting during Ramadan
is framed by secular activities such as visiting and watching tele-
vision. Walter Armbrust discusses the media quiz shows aired
during Ramadan in Egypt and points to the consumerism which
accompanies secular accoutrements of fasting. —Eds.

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

Fawazir Ramadan is not an “Islamic” program in terms of its content. It is

not, and does not pretend to be, “Islam on television.” It is, however, a pro-
gram geared to the Islamic calendar, and therefore has relevance to the
practice of religion in the contemporary Middle East. Although much me-
dia attention in Egypt and elsewhere is given to the “lighter side” of Rama-
dan (riddle shows, electronic greeting cards, etc.), many books and Web
sites on Ramadan take the form of a quite sober discourse on the meaning
of fasting. These sites consider not only the rules of fasting but also such
values as piety, humility, uniformity of the Islamic community, sincerity,
and struggle in the Way of God. Here is an example of one such explication
of the meaning of fasting:

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)

Despite such injunctions against overconsumption (which are readily

available in print form, as well as on the Internet, throughout the Muslim
world), the description of the Fawazir Ramadan television program that ap-
pears below suggests that it takes very little imagination to class such pro-
ductions as excess. The social setting in which the television sequence de-
scribed below occurs is a middle-class home just after the iftar. After the
meal is over, the dishes are cleaned, and everyone usually sits in some com-
mon room, chatting. Typically everybody is stuffed from having consumed
an abnormally large meal on an empty stomach. Most people have not yet
left the home to visit friends and relatives, a practice widely observed in
Egypt and elsewhere. In my videotaped sample, before the main riddle
program is broadcast comes a “pre–Fawazir Ramadan fazzura,” a kind of a
warm-up before the main event. After that comes a commercial interlude,
 338 / Performance and Entertainment
which I believe is an important and underanalyzed aspect of television.
After the “little fazzura” and the commercials comes the introduction to
the Fawazir Ramadan song-and-dance routine, followed ultimately by the
main event: the evening’s installment of Fawazir Ramadan.
The “little fazzura” described here is from 1990. It was sponsored by
Sharikat Nasr lil-Kimawiyat al-Wasita (the Nasr Company for Middle
Chemicals). This appears to be a public-sector company, possibly in the
throes of being privatized, as many government-owned companies have
been since the 1980s. Its market appears to be middle- to lower-middle-
class consumers, judging from its product line, which includes insecti-
cides, detergents, and cheap perfumes. A matronly woman not wearing a
hijab (veil), who is identi¤ed as Fayza Hasan, hosts the program:

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:

Shall we say the riddle?

#Amm Zaghlul al-Zanati
When the cannon sounds
 The Riddle of Ramadan / 339
Says, “Woman, bring me some protein from the restaurant.”
She smiles, and says to Zaghlul al-Zanati,
“We have some vegetarian protein
Its scienti¤c name is vichya faba
Food of the poor
Add a bit of lemon and oil, and let’s go
Everyone eat, and whoever gets full should thank God
For a loaf of bread and the vichya faba.

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:

God is greatest of all

Praise be to God
Thanks to God the provider
By your light, O Lord, guide me
Make fast my faith and strengthen me
Give me victory over my enemies
...
From your blessings the light of belief
Making humanity what it is
You also give man a soul
Revealing the truth is not a dream
I contemplate your earth and your heaven

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.

the main event

Now comes the main program, Fawazir Ramadan. It is announced by an at-

tractive, un-veiled woman: “Ladies and gentlemen: Fawazir Ramadan, by
the title ‘World of Paper, Paper, Paper.’ The program consists of thirty
pieces of paper that have a special signi¤cance in our lives. The star of the
show is the fannana isti"radiyya Nelli [Nelli, the revue-show artiste] . . . ”
Various other important contributors to the project are named. Then comes
the familiar, grandiose sign-on for the Egyptian Radio and Television
Union, Economic Section. The sign-on is accompanied by a spinning wheel
of colored pie-slices that fades into an illustration of an oversized radio and
television building, instantly recognizable by its rounded façade and tall
antenna. This sign-on is either culled from Egyptian television archives or
deliberately retro in design. But before the program can actually begin,
an ad is inserted into the ®ow. This is a fairly recent practice. The inser-
tion of ads into program introductions caused some comment in the early
1990s, though it is now quite common. The ad is for this year’s sponsor of
Fawazir Ramadan:

[deep, ponderous voice] Name of the manufacturer—Noritake; type of prod-

uct—¤ne quality china; name of the manufacturer—Noritake; place of sale
—Fitihi Center, Jidda; name of the manufacturer—Noritake; type of prod-
uct—¤nest tableware and tea sets for the best taste; name of the manufac-
turer—Noritake; mark of the manufacturer—concern for detail. The Fitihi
Center in Jidda presents LE 30,000 in cash prize money for Fawazir Ramadan.
Good luck.

Before I continue, let me set the scene of fawazir programs. Fawazir

Ramadan attracted a large audience during several of the Ramadans I spent
in Egypt. Particularly in 1986, the Fawazir seemed to attract a large crowd.
That year I was in Cairo studying Arabic at the American University. Most
nights during Ramadan I attended iftar with a lower-middle-class family
whom I had met through mutual friends. The family consisted of a di-
vorced woman and her two daughters, one a teenager and the other around
ten years old. Although the Fawazir are an aggressively secular counter-
 344 / Performance and Entertainment
point to a religious holiday, I can only say that this family watched them
religiously, missing few, if any, episodes. They were also trying to guess the
answers to the riddles in order to have a chance to win the prize.
My impression at that time—in 1986—was that watching the Fawazir
was a mass ritual. I generally joined the iftar, then stayed through the
Fawazir, which began about an hour and a half after iftar (just after the
"isha#) and lasted for roughly an hour. When the Fawazir ended I went home
or to other social engagements. My habits were fairly typical. When the
ending music of the Fawazir program played I said my good-byes and
headed for the street. When I left their apartment the streets were ¤lling
rapidly. Everyone seemed to be leaving at the same time. On the occasions
when I left early the streets were empty, and the sounds of the program
could be heard wafting from many a window.
In 1994, when I last spent signi¤cant time in Cairo, the Fawazir program
seemed to be either losing its hold over audiences or simply getting lost in
an increasingly large number of programs. However, this may have been a
function of the company I was keeping. Most of my friends and acquain-
tances by this time were male college students. Possibly such people have
never been very interested in this program. Maybe the 1986 Fawazir were
just more successful than the ones broadcast in 1994. And maybe the Fawa-
zir Ramadan targeted a particular segment of the television audience—i.e.,
women and children, and possibly the lower middle class more than the
more af®uent.
Fawazir Ramadan is nominally for children. Some informal queries to
Egyptian friends and acquaintances, as well as a query to an Internet dis-
cussion group devoted to Egypt and things Egyptian, yielded a basic pro-
¤le of the custom of watching it:

• The Fawazir Ramadan is clearly an invented tradition. Most of the

people I queried agreed that the mass media’s posing of riddles on
each night of the holiday dates from the 1950s. Some suggested that
its origins are further in the past—in the 1930s. Others believe that
the custom of telling riddles during Ramadan is ancient. The radio
version of the program was originally the brainchild of the vernacu-
lar poet Salah Jahin and a radio hostess named Amal Fahmi. Amal
Fahmi became known by the phrase “wi ni#ul kamaan” (“and we’ll say
it again”), after which the riddle was repeated. Ten years after the
program’s mid-1950s radio debut Fawazir Ramadan migrated to televi-
sion.
• After a ¤ve-year hiatus due to the 1967 war the program was revived.
• In 1975 the program metamorphosed into Sura wa Fazzura (A Picture
and a Riddle). A vivacious dancer known on the stage as Nelli acted
out the riddle.
• Also in 1975 the manager of Casio, the electronics company, began
 The Riddle of Ramadan / 345
to offer prizes for guessing the riddles. The ¤rst prizes were digital
wristwatches. Next, the owner of the local BMW dealership offered
luxury cars.
• In the mid-1980s Islamic investment companies used their sponsor-
ship of the program to promote their businesses. By the late 1980s
these companies had been accused of massive fraud and dissolved by
the government.

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 gypsy to the captain:

There’s a piece of paper in your life, captain—not a passport or a map or a
card. Your trip doesn’t start until you’ve gotten one from everyone who has
one. Get it, captain?

The fazzura (at the end of the dance routine):

The train travels and pulls into the station,
The Love Boat arrives at a foreign port.
Even a plane landing on the ground, sweetie.
There’s no difference between ¤rst class and some trashy passenger.
 346 / Performance and Entertainment
What’s more important? The chairs, or getting there?
Hintish bintish garrab wintish. Get it?

That is a sample fazzura. (The answer is “a boat ticket.”) The playful

anarchy of the program is noteworthy. “World of Paper, Paper, Paper” is a
joke about the iron cage of bureaucracy. The moral value attached to the
over-the-top commercialism of this vehicle for Noritake china sold in a
Saudi shopping center is related to that of the humble cartoonist in the
“Beans are my friend” riddle program mentioned earlier. Both are about
local identity. Nelli’s surreal anarchy is part of a series: by 1990 the audi-
ence has seen her do this something like ten times before. Every time her
performance was associated with breaking the fast during Ramadan: a
well-deserved pleasure after a day of doing God’s will. The repetitiveness
of the ritual makes it part of Egyptian Ramadan. Holiday traditions in-
clude fawanis (Ramadan lanterns that children play with); kunafa (a very
sweet pastry) and various other foods associated with the holiday; certain
songs and poems; the misahharati going around the neighborhood waking
everyone for their ¤nal predawn meal; the cannon going off to signal the
end of the fast; and now Fawazir Ramadan. The program is analogous to
such American holiday programming as Frosty the Snowman, How the Grinch
Stole Christmas, and Miracle on 34th Street.
Fawazir Ramadan is also eminently emulatable. Versions of it have spread
all over the Middle East. The United Arab Emirates, for example, has its
own fawazir program. The 1994 version of the Emirati program empha-
sized nation-building far more than did the Egyptian show. It was set
around a simulacrum of a Bedouin camp¤re set on a stage and surrounded
with folkloric objects. The “camp” was at one end of an open-air arena.
Emirati men in national dress sat on one side of the arena, women on the
other. At the opposite end of the arena a large black Mercedes was parked,
within which sat a son of Shaykh Zayed, the ruler of the U.A.E. Prize
money was sometimes passed out through the window of the car. A master
of ceremonies, in national dress, stood on the stage by the camp¤re and
asked the riddles. In this invented tradition the riddles were all about van-
ishing traditions: Emirati place names, folk games, ri®ery, and falconry.
These were all practices that the younger generation was, according to the
program, in grave danger of losing. The program was a spectacular illus-
tration of a community imagined, particularly given that the state is iden-
ti¤ed with a family, a representative of which looks on from a black Mer-
cedes, giving of¤cial sanction to the event and dispensing largess.

One challenge that phenomena such as the Fawazir Ramadan present to

us is to resist dismissing such programs as “inauthentic.” In his history of
Christmas in the United States Stephen Nissenbaum notes that the idea of
 The Riddle of Ramadan / 347
“invented tradition” is inescapable in the context of such practices as cele-
brating Christmas (and, increasingly, celebrating Ramadan). But, he con-
tinues,

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)

The Fawazir Ramadan television program is as invented a tradition as there

ever was, and precisely for this reason it makes an intriguing comparison
to Anglo-American Christmas. I believe that the comparison could ulti-
mately even be extended to include an investigation of the in®uence of glo-
balized Christmas observances on commoditized celebrations of Rama-
dan. To my surprise, when I ¤rst spent Christmas in a Muslim country (in
Tunisia in 1983) my Muslim hosts insisted that I celebrate the holiday with
them. Two years ago a friend in Cairo sent me a Ramadan Christmas card:
Santa by the pyramids under an Islamic crescent moon. A visit to a depart-
ment store in the United Arab Emirates during Christmas of 1994 brought
me face to face with a chubby, red-cheeked Santa (from Kerala, India).
A crucial part of this phenomenon is that the materialism of the newly
invented rituals enables a discourse of disapproval. I remember a friend
who adamantly refused to watch the fawazir programs. “Al-Fawazir al-
Burgwaziyya,” he called them: “the bourgeois riddles.” A discussion of “the
spirit of Ramadan” requires a profane twin. This is akin to the demand of
one of my own relatives, a Christian fundamentalist, for a traditionalism
that will counter the accretions of pagan and Victorian celebrations that
became Anglo-American Christmas: he makes the historically nonsensical
call to “put the Christ back in Christmas” (to which a more historically
astute traditionalist might plausibly reply, “put the carnival back in Christ-
mas”). There are undoubtedly many in the Muslim world who want to re-
focus the prescribed fast of Ramadan into a quest for purity, Islamic com-
munity, and religious merit, and they are, of course, as justi¤ed in this as
my relative is in demanding a more Christ-centered Christmas. All the
same, it seems likely that the ingenious coupling of materialism with
moral value is intensifying. A religious holiday blurs into a ritual of mass
consumption. In public culture disseminated by the mass media, the re-
ligious obligation of fasting during the month of Ramadan has become the
twin of the holiday Ramadan. Ramadan the holiday is associated with
Ramadan the period of ritual fasting. The two aren’t exactly the same, but
it is becoming increasingly dif¤cult to pull them apart.
 348 / Performance and Entertainment

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.