The first Ramadan series, or ‘musalsalah’ in Arabic, I remember watching was ‘Umm Kalthum’, released in December 1999. I was eight years old; mildly worried about the Y2K bug and fasting every second or third day with my extended maternal family in Khartoum. Every evening, after we had stuffed our faces with cumin-laden foul and freshly fried ta3meeya and bamiya and mulaah and kisra and 3aseeda, after the men had gone to the mosque next door and the women peeled off in pairs to pray in a nearby bedroom, after our religious and gastronomic appetites had been sated, it was finally time. The memb…

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