Anger Management – Ramadan Style

Yesterday I met up with my friend S., who’s from Jenin, works in Nablus and was visiting Ramallah over the weekend. We met at Birzeit University, where he had graduated 18 months ago and spent a few hours strolling around and catching up. The new Arts building is almost complete. Some classes are being held there although none of the departments have yet moved into their offices because some final touches are still being applied to the upper levels. A very elegant archway frames the entrance, and the atrium has a beautiful marble floor. When I asked S. where the university gets the money to build such nice buildings, he simply said ‘donors’ without elaborating.

S. also explained that bus and taxi drivers use their car horns to compensate for cigarettes during Ramadan. Hence the frustration that is caused by a sudden shift from two packs a day to none before sunset manifests itself in anger behind the wheel and subsequent noise. While the car horn is every driver’s friend here, it would certainly explain the situation in Al Quds two days ago.

S. was also telling me about the poor olive crop in the North this year, due to the lack of rain. Apparently the last few years have been cyclical, alternating between good and bad crops. He also said that economic circumstances are so bad these days that people have begun to steal olives during the night, which they then sell for money.