Laylat Al Qadr prayers at Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque
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The National
a day ago
- The National
Bartering returns to Gaza as hungry locals swap flour, lentils and shampoo
In Gaza, where war has choked the economy and blockades have emptied shop shelves, the millennia-old system of bartering is making a comeback. No longer a relic of ancient times or a plotline in historical dramas, exchanging goods has become a daily necessity for thousands living under Israel 's siege. Barter groups, once rare, are now among the most active online communities in Gaza. 'I used to hear about bartering in historical TV series,' Marwan Al Muqayed, 33, a father of two living in temporary accommodation in Gaza city's Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, told The National. 'But now it's how I survive. It's become a way of life.' With traditional commerce crippled by closed borders, rocketing prices and a severe cash shortage, residents of Gaza are turning to Facebook and WhatsApp groups to exchange goods such as lentils for flour, sugar for rice and soap for shampoo. Palestinians are living under what UN-backed experts have called a worst-case scenario of famine, with Israel allowing only modest numbers of aid lorries to enter the strip. Dozens of children have died from starvation, according to Gaza health officials, with doctors and aid workers feeling the strain as they try to salvage the situation. Issa Al Namnam, 44, a father of six, never imagined he would be sourcing baby milk for his youngest child through Facebook. 'The war and the lack of cash forced me, like many others, to rely on bartering,' he said. 'Sometimes I need oil or sugar but have no money. So I find someone who has what I need and offer them something I have.' These grass roots exchanges have become lifelines. Mr Al Namnam once swapped flour for a can of baby milk, and traded canned meat for spices he could not find anywhere else. It's not an ideal system. 'Bartering is old and not very efficient,' he admits. 'But in wartime it's what we have.' For Mohammad Qusay'a, 29, bartering is not only practical but the only viable option. A resident of Gaza's Safatawi neighbourhood, he rarely uses money except for buying a few vegetables. 'Most of my needs I cover through exchanges,' he told The National. 'I check the WhatsApp group daily, see what people are offering and arrange swaps.' With cash in short supply and banknotes deteriorating to the point where vendors have stopped accepting them, people were left with little choice. Mr Qusay'a has exchanged items such as dates, sugar, flour, shampoo and soap. 'I got tired of struggling with useless cash,' Mr Qusay'a said. 'Bartering is the only thing that works now. It helps me provide for my family without needing money.' When Gaza's border crossings were sealed in March, Mr Al Muqayed had the foresight to stockpile a few staple goods. But as the blockade dragged on, supplies dwindled and prices soared. 'I bought what I could at the start but when things ran out I had to buy from the market and prices were insane,' he says. 'That's when I turned to bartering.' In one exchange, he traded lentils for pasta and flour. In another, sugar for oil and rice. With Gaza's economy in freefall and the currency nearly worthless, residents are left clinging to community-driven solutions. 'Prices have doubled, even tripled. People can't afford anything any more,' he says. 'Bartering might not be ideal but it helps us get through this.' Though most see bartering as a stopgap until the war ends and normal trade resumes, its role in the daily life of Gazans is undeniable. In the face of financial collapse, isolation and hardship, people are building their own alternative economy, one swap at a time. 'For now, bartering is how we survive,' says Mr Al Namnam. 'Until the war ends and the shelves are full again, this is the system we trust.'
Gulf Today
2 days ago
- Gulf Today
The cold truth
While still living in the village of Chemlan in Lebanon's Chouf mountains, we had an old-fashioned wooden ice cream bucket with a handle to turn a tall metal container. We used to put our ice cream mixture into the container, place it in the bucket, surround it with ice sprinkled with salt and turn until frozen. Homemade ice cream was far more delicious and fun than driving to the town of Aley where a shop sold twenty types of ice cream, including yellow melon and mulberry as well as standard flavours vanilla and chocolate. We left the bucket behind when we became refuges in Cyprus during Lebanon's civil war. Several years ago, I was in Damascus' ancient Souq al Hamadiyah waiting for a shopkeeper to wrap up a parcel when I saw a riotous gathering further down the street. I wondered if this was a political or economic protest as Syria was experiencing hard times and went to see what was happening. The 'riot' was outside the Bakdash parlour where customers had gathered to buy ice cream. Founded in 1895, Bakdash is famous for its traditional mastic-flavoured ice cream manually churned with wooden paddles. The milk-cream-mastic mixture was initially chilled with ice brought from the mountains. In 2013, Bakdash opened a branch in Amman to serve Syrians settled there and the wider community. Earlier I had witnessed a smaller crowd at an ice cream parlour in the residential Karrada quarter of Baghdad. During May 2017, this proved to be a deadly location when a Daesh suicide bomber killed 26 people and wounded dozens as they broke the Ramadan fast with ice cream. While in Aleppo in Syria, I have always paused at Mahrosa to enjoy a dish of milk pudding topped with vanilla ice cream sprinkled with crushed pistachios. My driver, Joseph, could not visit Aleppo without this ice cream fix at this parlour although there are dozens more ice cream shops in the city, Syria's commercial hub. Ice cream has long been a global food just as coffee has become a global beverage. While coffee, which originated in Yemen, is prepared and served in multiple ways, the basic ice cream recipe is the same. It includes milk, cream, and sugar and multiple flavourings and fruits. Frozen desserts long predate coffee. Historians suggest they first appeared in 550BC in Persia, which had a very sophisticated and advanced civilisation. A first century AD Roman cookbook included recipes for deserts chilled with snow. Between the 8th-12th centuries the Japanese made a desert with flavoured syrup and ice shaved from blocks stored during the winter months. During China's Tang dynasty (618-907) a frozen goat's milk dish frozen called 'susan' became popular. During the Yuan dynasty (1206-1368), imperial chefs made another frozen dessert called 'iced cheese' flavoured with fruit, honey and wine. Legend holds that Moghul Emperor Kublai Khan gave the recipe to the Italian Silk Road traveller Marco Polo (1254-1324) who took it back to Italy. In the 16th century, India's Moghul rulers brought ice from the Hindu Kush mountains to make kulfi, a dish made with cream flavoured with saffron, cardamom, rose water, or mango which remains popular today in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Gulf. The 17th century saw ice cream introduced to France and England while the confection crossed the Atlantic to North America and was consumed by founding fathers of the United States George Washington, Tomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. In 1866, ice cream reached New Zealand. Ice cream became popular around the world during the first half of the 20th century after hosts of vendors produced and promoted their own varieties. Ice cream has even become a political weapon in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Ben & Jerry's, founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978 in the US state of Vermont has become a global brand. In July 2021, Ben & Jerry's announced it would end sales in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory and Israeli settlements which are illegal under international law. Ben & Jerry's argued sales in Palestinian lands is inconsistent with the values of the firm which supports a number of charities as well as action to counter global warming. The Republican Trump administration is currently using ice cream imports as a means to condemn rival Democrats. The office of the US Trade Representative wrote on July 20 on X, 'America had a trade surplus in ice cream in 2020 under President [Donald] Trump's leadership, but that surplus turned into a trade deficit of $40.6 million under President [Joe] Biden's watch.' The ice cream deficit is with Japan, South Africa, the European Union, Brazil, Canada, and Turkey. Although from these countries, imports count for a small portion of ice cream consumed in the US which remains a major exporter. From 1995 to 2020, ice cream exports earned the US from $20 million to $160 million, according to the online platform Observatory of Economic Complexity. The chief customers were Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Canada. In 2021 and 2022 the surplus disappeared and an ice cream deficit of $92 million and $32 million appeared. Italy has become the chief provider of imported ice cream. However, imports amounted to a tiny fraction, 0.18 per cent of the total, in 2024 while the US exported about 1 percent of total domestic production, 1.31 billion gallons during that year. Meanwhile, US individual consumption of ice cream has fallen from 8.3 kilos a year in 1975 to 5.3 kilos by 2023. Photo: Reuters
The National
3 days ago
- The National
Hunger and heartbreak as families struggle to survive war in Gaza
Every morning, 13-year-old Mahmoud Al Mahalawi wakes up in a tent pitched beside the rubble of his family's home in the Al Saftawi neighbourhood of Gaza. Before the war, the summer months meant school holidays and time to play. Now, he says, his days revolve around 'looking for ways to keep me and my family alive'. 'I start my day thinking where I should go first, to find some water or stand in line at the tikkia [charity kitchen] so I can bring food home for my brothers,' Mahmoud told The National. He shares the responsibility for his family's survival with his father, who works whenever he can find a job. Together, they try to scrape together enough for their basic needs amid famine-like conditions created by Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid. Desperate crowds often swarm the few aid lorries allowed to enter Gaza, while hundreds of people have been killed by Israeli forces near the few food distribution sites run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. 'I've thought more than once about chasing down the aid trucks or going to the American aid centre just to get food for my family,' Mahmoud says. 'But my parents always say no. They're afraid something will happen to me.' Gazan family's relief after receiving food aid As with most families in Gaza nowadays, anything beyond basic necessities, even fruit, is out of reach because of prices inflated by scarcity and siege. Small quantities of mangoes and bananas that appeared in the markets on Monday were being sold at 200 shekels (more than $50) for 1kg of mangoes and 17 shekels for a banana. 'Sometimes I see fruit and wish I could have some. But I'd never ask my father. He can barely afford to buy us flour, let alone fruit,' Mahmoud says. 'Sometimes I feel like I just want to die. No one really feels our pain. I'm a child, just like children anywhere in the world. I should be in a summer camp, playing football, swimming – not standing in line for water or food, not living in a tent.' Like many parents in Gaza, Mohammed Abu Asr, 41, is fighting not just hunger but heartbreak. Displaced by the war from Jabalia refugee camp, he now lives in a makeshift home with his wife and four children – two boys and two girls aged between three and 15 – in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. 'Yesterday, I told my kids not to leave the house, not because of danger, but because I didn't want them to see the fruit being sold outside,' he told The National. 'If they asked me to buy some, I wouldn't be able to. I can't even meet their basic needs, like bread and flour.' However, his children saw photos on Facebook of fruit arriving in Gaza and rushed to him saying, 'Dad, the fruit is here! Please buy us some', he says. 'Honestly, the feeling of helplessness was unbearable. There's no income. And even if there were, how could I justify paying such a huge amount just for fruit when we don't have food?' For Ilham Al Asi, 38, who lost her husband in an air strike last year, the burden of survival rests on her two young sons – Ibrahim, 14, and Yahya, 10. 'I have no one in this life but my children,' Ms Al Asi told The National. 'They're the ones doing everything they can to help us survive.' Each day, Ibrahim ventures out from their home in Al Tuffah to collect firewood from bombed buildings, risking injury or worse, so his mother can cook, if there is food or flour to prepare. Yahya, meanwhile, stands in line at a charity kitchen for up to five hours each day to bring home a pot of food. 'Sometimes he leaves at nine in the morning and doesn't come back until three in the afternoon,' Ms Al Asi says. 'And what he brings back isn't even enough for two people.' She says Yahya once suffered a head injury during a crush at the food kitchen. 'We had to take him to the hospital. The crowd was so desperate. Famine in Gaza has reached an unimaginable level. People can't even secure the most basic food or clean water.' Ms Al Asi is infuriated by Israel's claims that sufficient quantities of aid are reaching Gaza. 'The occupation says it's sending aid and children's supplies to protect them from hunger. That's a lie,' she says. 'The only reality here is famine. It's killing us, children, adults, the elderly. Everyone is suffering. Everyone is dying slowly, every single day.'
