In Ramadan people start behaving irrationally and gluttonously, buying everything they find in their way, buying at excess… People start buying kilos of sweets everyday. However, buying sweets, especially in the first days if Ramadan, can sometimes be a battle. The below is a video taken by our office boy at Safsouf Sweets in Beirut when he was trying to buy sweets at 3;00 pm on the second day of Ramadan. It took him one hour to buy the sweets.According to my boss, who has ordered the sweets, though Safsouf is a very old and traditional store, with no pompous decor… people go to him for genuine taste. Still I can not imagine waiting to get sweets, in a sweets shop full of aromas, for an hour while I am fasting. Could you?
I have not seen such a stampede in a shop even when I was a little girl in the USSR and food was rationed and you needed to stand for hours in line to get anything.
Ramadan Sweets Shortages – Beirut (Safsouf Sweets) from Darine Sabbagh on Vimeo.
Tags: arabic sweets, beirut, celebrating ramadan, islamic brand, lebanon, middle eastern traditions, ramadan, ramadan traditions, video
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Safsouf is an oriental sweets institution!
I usually get Ramadan sweets early in the morning before I go to work
- beating the pre-iftar afternoon rush hour(s)But you’re absolutely right – although this behavior might be well-intentioned (i.e. people wanting to make their families happy by bringing them tasty sweets to enjoy after a long day of fasting), the amount of rudeness practiced in stores and the amount of excess seen on iftar tables is simply un-Islamic and completely beats the purpose of the Holy Month of Ramadan
Plus you don’t need to buy a different kind of sweets every single day! JOKE!
Check out my related post on Ramadan: http://noteconnection.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/ramadan
Great post Darine! (as usual
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It’s good the video is only 30 seconds or else my neck pain would have got worse.
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Darine, you used to live in the USSR? I didn’t know that! You should write a post about that.
As for the sweets, can’t really say that I’ve had an experience buying sweets here in Lebanon. Do you eat different sweets to celebrate Ramadan than normal? All I know is that I do love “7elo”! I’m going to bring back a truck load for my friends and family back home..
I will be fasting on Monday for the first time in my life, and then going to an Iftar afterwards..
Yeah and I have to agree,,I don’t know how anyone could work in sweets shop or in a restaurant while they are fasting! It must be torture!
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Yes I have a lot of lucid childhood pink and hazy memories from there… I am sure it is nothing like the truth
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