'Wake up sleepers, praise Allah': the mesaharati remains part of Ramadan tradition

Bismillahi Rahmanu Rahim

Banging his drum in the early hours of the morning during Ramadan to wake people before the daily fast, the mesaharati has been disappearing from Egypt's towns and villages in recent years.

"Wake-up sleepers, praise Allah!", calls the mesaharati as he strolls through the streets before dawn, banging his drums to wake people up for their sohour meal during Ramadan.

The neighborhood mesaharati has always shouldered the burden of waking people up, often by name, so they can have a late night meal in preparation for the next day's fast.
Before alarm clocks and mobile phones, the mesaharati's job was crucial, but even in the digital age, the mesaharati remains a steadfast Ramadan tradition.
While fading in some areas, the tradition is still alive and well in the popular districts of Old Cairo or in the beautiful city of Alexandria and started again since a few years in the city of Nasr. Surprisingly, you may even find some female mesaharatis competing in the male-dominated profession.

In rural areas, each mesaharati is usually in charge of waking up their entire village. He would ride a bicycle and stop at each alley, beating his drum to tell sleepers it's time for their pre-dawn meal.

The tradition has been maintained thanks to those who have refused to give up the job they take on for only one month a year. Still, one wonders why the tradition of the mesaharati has persisted for so long?
"We were handed down the job by our parents and grandparents, says Saber El Mesaharati, who has been in charge of El Darb El Gedid area in Sayeda Zeinab for the past 35 years.

"My mother was a mesaharati. My brother and I used to follow her on her route as she woke people up in this area for decades. My brother is now responsible for the Darb Elgamamiz area, he said.
Saber is responsible for El Darb El Gedid area, and pitches a small tent near the Sidi El Gineidi Mosque for the duration of Ramadan. Saber used to live in the area but had to move because his house was badly affected by the earthquake that hit the capital in 1992. Now he's living in Salam City and works as a painter.

Every year he comes back to El Darb El Gedid at the residents' request to wake them up for sohour each night. Everyone in the area knows the place near the mosque is his temporary home, and the municipality officials wouldn't dare ask him to move an inch.
"This is because the residents would never be able to find another mesaharati, explained Saber. "Don't underestimate our job. To be a mesaharati, you have to know every building in the district. You have to be able to remember the residents' names, walk long distances, and call out loudly so your voice can reach the top floors. This is why it isn't that easy to replace one mesaharati with another.

"You can't be a mesaharati job in a district you're not familiar with. This Ramadan I was asked to work in Dar El Salam, but I simply refused because I don't know the place.
Saber starts his tour of the town at 1 am so that he can finish in time for the dawn prayers.
Question is, do people really depend on Saber more than their alarm clocks?
"Not really, he said, "Very few do, but mostly the mesaharati walks along beating his drum and calling out to the townspeople because it triggers a kind of joy with kids who have come to associate Ramadan nights with the mesaharati.

He recalled, "One time a man who lived on the fourth floor asked me to come up. I thought he was going to tip me, but it turns out his daughter just wanted to see the mesaharati. It's one way of encouraging children to love Ramadan.
There is no guarantee that the residents will tip him, but sometimes parents give him money so he would call out to their children by name. Still, some people give the mesaharati a eidaya (a monetary gift offered during the Eid holiday).

At the end of Ramadan, Saber packs up his tent and heads back home to Salam City with his wife Om Mohamed, who insists on accompanying him to look after his needs.
"There is no Ramadan without a mesaharati, insists Saber.
"My only wish is to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. I am doing a religious duty for peanuts and the little I aspire to is to go to Mecca before I die, says Saber.

El Mesaharaty in Nasr City 

The mesaharati of Nasr City has will start again his job in this Ramadan. Roaming the streets, he tries to reach out to the residents to remind them of Sohour time (sohour is the meal before sunrises). The job has become rather difficult and insignificant in the noisy streets of the big cities.

It has become very rare to hear a real mesaharati, the man who traditionally wakes people up before sunrise during Ramadan in order to eat before fasting starts. Indeed, the mesaharati has become something of a dying profession, even though it has been practised since the early days of Islam.

The first mesaharati is believed to have been Bilal Ibn Rabah, one of the Prophet Mohamed's companions, who was well known for his harmonious voice. Since Ibn Rabah's time, however, a harmonious voice has not always sufficed, and later the mesaharati used a small drum, calling out people's names in order to wake them for sohour, the last meal before sunrise in Ramadan.

Later still, it sometimes became difficult even to walk in the city streets, what with the noise and the traffic. Happily, people today have other wake-up calls to choose from, with televisions, mobiles and alarm clocks all at hand. All this has contributed to the decline of the mesaharati 's trade, even though many people still love to hear one.

 

One mesaharati who continues in the ancient ways is 48-year-old Rabea Hussein, who walks through the streets of Nasr City every night in Ramadan from half past one in the morning until quarter past three, banging his drum and calling on people to wake.

His nightly round starts in Abu Dawoud Al-Dhaheri Street, moving to the Hadiqat Al-Tifl (the children's park) and the Institute of Social Services in Ahmed Fakhri Street, before returning to Hassan Al-Maamoun Street to finish. Hussein wears the traditional clothing of turban, galabiya and scarf, and he has worked in the district for 13 years as an employee of the local mosque, though that last Ramadan was the first time he has been employed as a mesaharati.

Hussein first entered the profession by helping a friend, the mesaharati of his hometown, the village of Abbad Sharona in Minya in Upper Egypt. "Ahmed Saleh, head of the Wa Islamah Association, proposed that I work in Nasr City as mesaharati this Ramadan. I liked the idea, so they provided me with a drum and I started working," Hussein comments.

Wa Islamah, a charitable association, carries out activities in seven Egyptian governorates, among them finding foster parents for orphaned children, running educational programmes, distributing clothes to the needy, helping to cover the medical costs of those not able to afford them, and helping school pupils and women to memorise the Quran. The association has many supporters from the field of business and sport, including football stars Sayed Abdel-Hafiz and Ahmed Koshari.

Hussein says that because he is responsible for a fairly large area, he likes to start early, at half past one rather than three in the morning. "I myself barely have time to eat before beginning to fast again during Ramadan. One day I couldn't find the time to eat anything at all, as I was late on my round," he says.

When he worked as mesaharati in his village, he used to sing religious songs and call people by their names. This is not possible in the different circumstances of Nasr City, Hussein says, because of the district's size and the number of people living there. "However, if I do know someone, then I call him by his name. The children also ask me to call them by their names," he says.

Hussein loves the work, which he sees both as a way of drawing closer to Allah and as a way of helping people. "Many people wake up as soon as they hear my drum. Two days ago, I didn't go along Mahmoud Ghoneim Street as usual, and people were quite upset because their children had been waiting for me. A few days ago some Arab tourists in Egypt asked me if they could have their photographs taken with me, saying that they liked to spend Ramadan in Egypt because of the presence of the mesaharati."

As Hussein does his rounds at night, many children and some adults can be seen watching him from their balconies. Sometimes children clap along with him as he passes.

According to Hani Abdel-Ghani, a member of Wa Islamah and a Nasr City resident, Hussein's round was small at the beginning, but when residents expressed their plaudits for his work the association decided to expand it.

For 11-year-old Louay Khaled, who lives in an 11th-floor flat in the area, it is important to stay awake during Ramadan to see the mesaharati pass by. "It is better to have a mesaharati in Ramadan than not to have one, and I very much enjoy seeing him," he said.

However, while the children and many adult residents of the district like the idea of having a traditional mesaharati during Ramadan, others see another side. One resident, a student at the Faculty of Commerce at Ain Shams University, thinks that a mesaharati should work in traditional areas, where he knows the residents, rather than in middle-class areas where he does not.

However, despite such criticisms, Ahmed Saleh, head of Wa Islamah, insists that having a mesaharati in areas like Nasr City is important because it can contribute to reviving and strengthening religious traditions.

"We weren't sure that the idea would work when we started it, and we were even half expecting it to fail. But to our pleasure and surprise people liked it," Saleh said. 

El Mesharaty or El Mesaharaty remains until today the connection of people with the old past, with traditions, memories, childhood, fanous (the special lamp of Ramadan). Every Muslim is expecting to hear the drum of el Mesharaty waking up the people in time for Sohour. And in every night in Ramadan, the Mesharaty comes to remind us that we have to let all away and start our day in the name of Allah - Bismillahi Rahmanu Rahim.

Simple, with modesty, for the happiness of Allah, el Mesharaty is doing his wonderful job and he knows, that each house is waiting patiently for him, in the night...