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DİYARBAKIR - The first day of Ramadan Fest is a day of work and labor for women, and a day for children to forget about their poverty and play games. The women living in Ben û Sen said: "Bayram is not for us poor, but for the rich. This is not justice, but disgrace."

 

Due to the pandemic, there has been a full lockdown in Turkey since April 29. While the pandemic ban continues, women also spend the Ramadan Fest by working.

 

In the Ben û Sen district in Diyarbakır’s Yenişehir district, some of the women spend their time cleaning the front of their houses and some of them collecting the pile of rubbles in the neighborhood since Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality repaired the city walls. While their mothers try to create a cleaner and risk-free area for them, children experience the joy of the eid by playing different games.

The women we talked to stated that the eid is not the same as before, and that with the “full lockdown” they become even poorer, and they cannot afford the eid candy. 

 

‘Prohibitions are used as excuse’

 

Stating that she was forced to move to Ben û Sen from Lalebey Neighborhood six years ago during the curfew process announced in 2015-2016 in Sur, Azize Erdoğan said that they could not celebrate the eid due to poverty and state pressure. Azize mentioned: "My house is empty for six years. This is not justice, but disgrace. We are dying from the poverty and coronavirus. In previous years, when the municipality was in the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), we used to receive eid aid. We would have forgotten that we were poor on eids, but in recent years we are in distraughtly. Even our cemeteries are right there, but we cannot go. Because prohibitions are used as excuse, but this is a tradition for us. They are trying to distance us from our culture and customs."

 

‘Eid is not for us, but for the rich’

 

A woman, who did not want to be named, said that they could not think of the eid due to the economic crisis and that they often had to open the iftar with soup. The woman stated: "Do the authorities never see the troubles we are going through? We are starving here. Bayram is not for us, it is for the rich. We do not want to think, ‘Will we be able to feed our children?’. Enough! How long will this continue? Bayram used to be beautiful. But now we do not even want the feast to come, because every time it comes, my problems are increase. I could not even buy shoes for my children."