Ramadan

As you can see I have a site counter from which I can see where people who visit my blog come from. Most of them tend to be English speakers, so I tink I better switch back to English (though writing in my mother tongue is .. I wouldn't say easier, I can simpl express myself at my best). Anyway, Ramadan is starting. Since a couple of weeks now, its symbols have started appearing in the streetsa and in the shops of Cairo: dried fruit, nuts, almonds but most of all, the fawanis, the traditional lamps. From what I see around most of the stuff exposed ouside houses and buildings is madeof plastic, probably in China (like anything cheap you can buy anywhere). I imagine how it used to be, just a few decades ago, when people were using wrought iron and colored glass..the roots of this tradition seem to be quite ancient, and date back at the Fatimid period, when people used to move around at night, carrying the fawanis in their hands and announcing the beginning of the mnth of Ramadan. But besides all this, yesterday I also tasted the "dark side" of the beginning of Ramadan. Telephone lines were so busy with people wishing each other HAPPY RAMADAN that I could not reach Youssef here in Cairo (and I was really worried about that) and my mother could not reach me even at home (and she was getting quite nuts about that). Many people warned me on the traffic situation also.. traffic jams and the impossibility of finding a cab to go back home..I'll probabily post about this later...