Ramadan cannon no longer booms

NABLUS, West Bank -- One gun has fallen silent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the century-old cannon that used to signal the end of the day's fast during Ramadan.\nAs the Muslim holy month got under way this week, the gun's thunderous boom has been silenced by the fire chief of this Palestinian city because he doesn't want to spook already jittery residents, and he can't get gunpowder anyway.\nAcross the West Bank, Ramadan is a somber affair this year, with Israeli military curfews keeping many residents confined to their homes, unable to visit relatives for large, festive evening meals at the end of the daytime fast.\n"I lost my feeling for Ramadan," said Dalal Sobieh. "I just feel hungry."\nSobieh filled her small kitchen with the smells of spices and sweets, but no one came; her family is from a village separated from Nablus by dangerous roads and military checkpoints.\nHer husband and two little girls, 8-month-old Waad and Shahad, 10, sat around a small table spread with soup, rice, salad and bread on a yellow plastic tablecloth.\nWithout the cannon, the call to break the fast comes over crackling radios in an old man's voice: "God is great."\nRamadan is the holiest time of year for Muslims. It marks God's revelation of the holy book, the Quran, to the Prophet Mohammed 1,400 years ago. During the day, the faithful go without food, drink, cigarettes and sex in acts of sacrifice and purification.\nThe fast ends at dusk with a meal that includes warm dishes, as well as dates, juice, soup and syrupy sweets. Normally, it's as much a social custom as a religious one, with extended families gathering and lingering in conversation until late in the evening.\nBut after two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, Ramadan brings only memories of happier times in Nablus, which once drew thousands of visitors in search of the town's famous knafi, sweets of cheese and wheat soaked with syrup.\nThe memories are especially vivid for the 53-year-old fire chief, Yousef Al Jabi, who used to light the century-old cannon, a leftover from Turkish rule, with a gush of fire and smoke to the squeals of delighted children -- a tradition that dates back to the 10th century.\n"We lost a lot of Ramadan symbols," Al Jabi said, looking over the cannon, which sits silent behind the firehouse in a lot heaped with cars, junked engines and metal.\n"I get calls from old men and women asking me to fire the cannon as a reminder of happier days," Al Jabi said. "They say, 'Let us hear it again before we die.'"\nBut he can't anyway, because he used to get the gunpowder from the Israeli military, which won't sell him the few grams of powder each day anymore.\nStill, Ramadan brought some hope, some fun even. For a few hours after sundown, children lit firecrackers outside their homes, filling the town with crackling that for once wasn't from gunfire. A tough-looking young man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth helped light a little girl's sparkler.\nThe fire chief, Al Jabi, even cracked a smile, remembering the laughter of children who came to see him fire the cannon. The break in a tradition that goes back to 10th century Egypt leaves him sad.\n"I miss that, the children coming, being happy," he said.