Fatema Qaadan

Fatema Qaadan greets us clad in a bright orange dress that matches her henna-dyed hair, one gold tooth in her radiant smile. A widow, she lives with her teenage daughter in a single room inherited from her late husband. It is a painfully hot summer day with a strong sandy wind, and to boot, it is Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar, in which the observant fast from dawn till sunset. No matter: in this tiny space, using a single detached gas burner, she prepares a splendid Iftar meal for us of fatta bil aranib from one of the rabbits she raises in the sandy lot abutting her room.