Leaving his family behind in the southern Egyptian city of Minya, Khalifa Ahmad used to have his iftar in the month of Ramadan at a charity banquet hosted by a retired belly dancer in Cairo on the street near a building where he works as a doorman.
Muhammad Mursi, a former senior official in the formerly banned Muslim Brotherhood, became Egypt’s first elected civilian and Islamist president in late June.
Thousands of people in this country where around of 40 per cent of the 82 million population are believed to be living under the poverty line, eat the charity street meals during Ramadan.
Known as Mawaed Al Rahman or the “tables of the merciful”, free street meals are a decades-old feature of the month of Ramadan in Egypt.
Until Mubarak’s exit last year, many wealthy members of his governing National Democratic Party used to spend lavishly on thee meals apparently to woo potential voters in elections.
Several of Mubarak’s key loyalists are now n jail on charges of corruption.
In an obvious effort to make up for the drop in charity banquets this Ramadan, the army is distributing free meals across the nation, mainly in poor areas.
Meanwhile, non-governmental charitable societies are giving away charity boxes, known as Ramadan bags.
These boxes include dried foods such as lentils, rice, yameesh (a mixture of dried fruit and nuts), edible oil and other goodies badly needed in Ramadan when consumption rates usually increase.
“We decided this year to stop hosting the street tables after we noticed that street vendors used to flock to these tables to eat meat and leave the rest of the food to go to waste,” said Sawsan Mokhtar, the head of a charitable society in Cairo.
“Instead we have been distributing cooked meals and boxes containing food supplies to poor families since the start of Ramadan,” she told this newspaper.
“Together with other charitable societies, we send free food to villages outside Cairo where poverty rates are high.”
Islamist groups, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, keep a high profile in assisting the poor in Ramadan.
“Not all those benefiting from street meals are fasting observants,” said Hassan Idriss, a Muslim cleric in northern Cairo, said.
“They include thugs and drug junkies. At the same time, these meals hurt the feelings of the real poor, as they make them appear like beggars. So, the best way to serve the poor is to deliver assistance to them at their houses. Mosques help identify those poor every area without much noise,” he added.
