Ramadan starts in Mideast amid high costs, hopes for peace
Associated PressKHARTOUM, Sudan — Hundreds of millions of Muslims began the first daily fast of Ramadan on Thursday, as parts of the Middle East approached crucial junctures in high-stakes peace negotiations during the holy month, traditionally a time of reconciliation. “Those who can’t afford don’t have to pay,” said Fatima Mohammed Hamid, who sells food items from her small home on Tuti island on the Nile River, just north of Khartoum. “We had Ramadan in the good old days, but today there is no longer Ramadan.” Diplomats and leaders had expressed new hope for peace efforts in the days leading up to Ramadan, amid signs of warming relations between two of the region’s rival superpowers, Iran and Saudi Arabia. In the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras — near the quake’s epicenter — worshipers held the first Ramadan prayers inside a 1,000-person tent on the grounds of the city’s famed Abdulhamid Han Mosque. In Syria’s northwestern Idlib province — the last rebel enclave -- very few families still have the energy or resources to make the necessary preparations for Ramadan this year.
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