In a quiet shop just off Punchbowl’s main road, Palestinian pharmacist-turned-cafe owner Mohammad Ismail is making the first of thousands of the cheesy, sweet nabulsi knafeh he will produce over the next month.
Ismail is preparing for the Lakemba Nights food market, which runs in the evenings for Muslims and other community members to break their daily fasts during Ramadan, the most sacred month of the year. He will be up until about 3am every night.
Mohammad Ismail makes the first batch of Palestinian nabulsi knafeh for customers of his stall at Lakemba Nights during Ramadan.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The holy period – which was expected to begin at sunset on Friday, pending the sighting of a crescent moon by imams – means different things to different people, but to Ismail, the most important thing is patience.
“Ramadan is the time where we practise patience,” he said. “You wait, you know there is something coming, the time of the sunset … With every conflict, there is an ease. God says it twice.”
It is a belief he is holding on to as he thinks of his family living in Ramallah, the largest city in the occupied West Bank.
“It’s up and down,” he says of his family’s experience of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, as he pours pistachios over the top of the sweet dish. Life for his parents has become very expensive, and they can often buy fruit only once a week, he said.
Mohammad Ismail with the first batch of Palestinian nabulsi knafeh at his Lakemba Nights stall.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The United Nations reported on Thursday that the Israeli government’s raids in the West Bank had left 40,000 people homeless. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations aid agency UNWRA, said the region was “becoming a battlefield”.
The feeling among Palestinian Muslims during Ramadan last year was more sombre, he said, given the situation in Gaza. But he was optimistic that, if the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held out, this year would be more hopeful.
‘A spiritual retreat’
For Gamel Kheir, secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association, Ramadan is like a spiritual retreat – one for which you don’t need to leave home.
And with a retreat – where, through fasting, one is said to have the time and space to get closer to Allah – comes a time for reflection.
“You’re doing a spiritual retreat while you’re in your home and workplace,” he said. “With the world that we live in, these retreats are required – just a sanity check, if you will.”
He said spending a month reflecting was necessary, given “we’ve been so fixated on the atrocities happening overseas”.
“I think we need this one month to sort of go into a bit of a retreat and get away from the politics and history of everything, and just focus more on our spirituality.”
Kheir genuinely looks forward to the month.
“Talk to any Muslim and he’ll tell you it’s his favourite month of the year.”
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.