Muslims continue to fast for Ramadan

His shy, 19-year-old bride chased him out of the kitchen and, laughing, chided him for getting in her way. He waited patiently for her to join him before breaking his fast and then gently kissed her hand in thanks for the meal.

Now, more than 40 years later, it is another Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast during daylight to mark God's revelation of their holy book, the Koran, to Prophet Mohammed. Ramadan began Dec. 20 in Egypt with the sighting of the new moon and will end next week when a new crescent appears, starting the next month in the lunar calendar.

Ibrahim's wife has been dead seven years, and he is kneeling in a dusty courtyard in Cairo's City of the Dead, shivering from the evening chill. The walls of his wife's brick tomb are crumbling, its door covered in dust.

He waits for the call to prayer, when he will break his fast by her gravesite, a somber ceremony he began when she died.

"I miss you, Jehan. I miss you."

The call to evening prayer envelops Cairo. Different lives converge at this moment, brought together by faith and family.

Another day of fasting is over, sacrifice replaced by indulgence, the illicit - at least in terms of food - now licit.

Rutted dirt roads wind through the City of the Dead, home to not only the deceased, but to thousands of the poor who live in the mausoleums for lack of any alternative.

Televisions cast a surreal glow over the tombs. On screen, a young Egyptian actress, singing off-key, dances her way through the nightly television show "Ramadan's Riddles."

Cairo's streets - almost always jammed with traffic - are suddenly still as most people already have rushed home to eat.

After hours on his feet standing guard outside one of Cairo's riverfront hotels, police officer Sayed Abdullah is seated on a rickety wooden chair. His meal of a "ful" sandwich, an Egyptian specialty of mashed beans, is balanced in his lap.

Eating slowly to avoid going back on duty, he watches the odd car whiz by. A driver late for the Ramadan meal races by blowing his horn, hoping to get home before the choicest cuts of lamb or chicken are snapped up.

"Look at that madness, that stupidity," says Abdullah, shaking his head. "Always a rush, always the horn. Why not just drive slowly and enjoy the quiet. What if they crashed or killed someone?"

"Is ... a meal worth a life?" he asks.

That is a question Khalid Nassar is asking himself as an irate driver zips by, missing him by inches.

Seated in the middle of a bridge exit ramp, next to a tray of strategically placed broken eggs, Nassar is weeping and doing his best to look pitiful.

"Ramadan is about helping the poor, and I'm poor," says Nassar, an admitted convert.

He explains his game: he begs for spoiled eggs from grocers, then breaks them on the pavement in hopes people will think he has accidentally dropped his family's food.

"God says that we must first try to help ourselves before turning to Him," he said. "That's all I'm trying to do here, help myself."

But Nassar's hopes for sympathy and charity fail. No one stops to give money. Perhaps everyone is too rushed.

Instead, Nassar gets an insult.

"You idiot," yells the driver of a car swerving around him. "You'll be killed, God willing."

At the City of the Dead, Youssef Ibrahim slowly clears away the leftovers of the meal he ate by his wife's grave.

He thinks of his oldest son, Adham, an engineer living in Germany, and smiles. Adham will break his fast with his wife.

He thinks of his other son, Mahmoud, who died of pneumonia two months into his infant life.

"Coming here helps," says Ibrahim. "Now, in Ramadan, more than any other time, I feel how close God is to me. Ramadan is about family. And we're still a family. Death can't take that away."

Ibrahim looks at his wife's grave.

"I'll bring chicken tomorrow. You like that, don't you?"

01-13-99