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- Country of residence: Palestine
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The scene of sixty-year-old Nahida Al-Nimr standing in front of a stall (a small table) selling “Qatayef” sweets, on a narrow street in the “Tal Al-Hawa” neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City, no longer arouses the astonishment of passers-by.
Ten years of working in this seasonal profession and on the same stall were enough for hundreds of people to get to know Hajja “The Tiger” and build social relationships with her.
With great enthusiasm, Al-Nimr stands in front of the qatayef making machine and as she pours this elastic dough over the bread “oven,” she says that this Ramadan dessert “is made with a lot of love.”
From a hobby at the age of 44, to a profession at the age of ten, this is how Al-Nimr took her “temporary” source of livelihood during the Ramadan season, she told Anadolu Agency.
There are many narratives in the history of the “cotton industry,” as one of them says that it dates back to the Umayyad era and another to the Abbasid era, while the most widely circulated narrative states that it dates back to the “Mamluk” era, where one of the Mamluk kings gathered sweet makers and asked them to present a variety that no one had made before, so one of them invented it. A pie stuffed with nuts called “Qatayef”.
Qatayef candy is considered one of the most popular Ramadan sweets and is manufactured in the Gaza Strip, especially since it is cheap in price and suits the general economic situation of the population.
Ten years ago, Al-Nimr began working in Al-Basta, to help her family, in light of the deteriorating economic conditions.
“Qatayef dough,” which Al-Nimr learned from her husband since she was a young woman, to which she now adds what she says are “the secrets of the craft,” until its taste has become distinctive among customers, as she says, quoting them.
Regarding the first time that “Al-Nimr” stood behind the “qatayef” table to make and sell it to customers, she felt a kind of strangeness, especially since she was a “woman,” and this matter was not familiar to Gazans.
But over time, she became accustomed to this situation until her absence from the stall became an uncommon occurrence for customers.
"Al-Nimr" believes that she is the first Palestinian woman in Gaza to work in the profession of making velvet, in front of a stall in one of the Strip's alleys.
She says that this stall supports her family, only during the month of Ramadan.
But she is seriously considering allocating one day a week, after the month of Ramadan, to open the stall and sell to customers, based on the request of a number of them.
She added, "A number of customers asked me to prepare qatayef for them after the end of this month, for example, allocating one day a week to sell it, and I will think seriously about this matter."
The month of Ramadan is considered a season for many professions that close their doors outside of this month.
“The Tiger” stall is one of dozens of stalls that Gazans open during Ramadan to support their families and provide a source of livelihood in light of the lack of job opportunities.
The price of one kilogram of ready-made qatayef ranges from about 7 shekels (about 2 US dollars).
The unemployment rate in Gaza has currently risen to about 52 percent, and the poverty rate has exceeded 80 percent, according to both the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (governmental) and the Popular Committee for Lifting the Siege on Gaza (non-governmental).
According to a report issued by the United Nations World Food Program on December 19, about 70 percent of Gaza’s population suffers from food insecurity.
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