A Traditional Ramadan Treat Gets a Modern Remake (but Good Luck Getting It)

New York Times

26-03-2025

As the minutes ticked closer to sundown, the crowd grew more impatient, pressing against the glass display case, shouting and shoving bills toward the young men filling order after order of the Ramadan sweet bread.
'If you please—'
'What is this stuffed with?'
'Sir, take my money!'
'Just be patient!'
The high-pressure volley of queries, entreaties and pleas for patience plays out each evening of Ramadan as Syrians jostle for marook, a sweet bread eaten here during the Muslim fasting month. As the time of iftar, the breaking of the fast, nears, a day's worth of hunger pangs combine with jockeying among patrons desperate to get their marook loaves and rush home before the call to prayer sounds from mosque minarets.
There is a hint of tension in the air, but much more pronounced is the smell of baked bread, sugar and chocolate.
Marook, a simple sweetened bread sprinkled with sesame seeds, has been a part of Syrian Ramadan traditions for generations. Each year, as bakeries — and the occasional pizza parlor — devote their entire production to it during Ramadan, new variations emerge to satiate evolving tastes.
Syrians are proud of their rich culinary traditions, but not precious about allowing them to evolve. There are now olives in the fattoush salad. Onions in the shawarma. Parsley in the hummus.
And then there is marook, which comes in so many different iterations that bakeries post long lists of all their offerings, some unrecognizable from the original. Perhaps unavoidably given the viral food trend, a Dubai chocolate marook appeared in some shops this year.
Prices differ from bakery to bakery. Individual loaves often cost around 4,000 Syrian pounds, less than 50 cents, while large ones — depending on how fancy they are — can go up to 45,000 pounds.
'The older people like the classic for sure,' said Tareq al-Abyad, the owner of one bakery, Al Jouzeh, standing between racks stacked with trays of marook. 'I even get surprised by the new ones. For me, I only like the plain one. But I don't sell only what I like, I have to sell what the customers want.'
On the other side of the glass counter his customers stood on the sidewalk calling out their orders above the honking in the street behind them. Occasionally they had to dodge a bicycle or motorcycle racing onto the sidewalk to avoid the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the road as everyone rushed to make it home in time for iftar.
'Please, is there pistachio bubbly?' asked Ayah al-Homsi, 27, referring to a marook that comes in a honeycomb shape and is drizzled with pistachio cream.
The bakery was already out of that flavor. She got an Oreo-filled one instead.
'The first night we always eat plain, date-filled and coconut,' said Ms. al-Homsi, a Damascus native, of her family's Ramadan eating habits. 'And then we start trying the other flavors.'
Seemingly overwhelmed by the choices, a couple and their young daughter stood debating each flavor before walking off without any marook.
At Al Jouzeh, baking begins at 6 a.m. The bakers eat suhoor, the predawn meal before the fast, at home, then arrive for an exhausting day of kneading, stuffing, glazing and sprinkling.
They work like a well-oiled assembly line. Little is said except for the occasional urging from one worker, Mahmoud Midani, 39, to pick up the pace.
'Let's go — move this tray,' he ordered Muhammad Taboosh each time another tray was filled.
Mr. Taboosh, 16, was nearly covered in flour.
The bakery runs off a mix of solar energy, a diesel-powered generator and two hours a day of government-provided electricity. Syria's power grid is marked by long blackouts, a result of the 13-year civil war.
Mohammad Hilwan, 20, from the Old City in Damascus, has been working at the bakery for more than a year.
'This is part of our Syrian heritage and goes back many many generations,' he said. 'This variety, we are changing with the times. It's not something bad — on the contrary, this is modernization.'
One by one he took a small marook loaf from a tray and filled it with melted white chocolate using an automatic nozzle before drizzling more on top and adding a sprinkle of crumbled chocolate cookie. It is his favorite flavor.
'The plain ones our grandfathers used to eat,' he said.
The bakery has three locations, and between them they make about 11,000 large and small marook loaves each day, Mr. al-Abyad said. Those thousands of loaves disappear quickly in the last hour of the day's fast, and customers seeking specific flavors may walk away empty-handed.
'My dear, just one with dates,' said Salih Muhammad, 41, as he stuck his head behind the counter trying to maneuver past the crowd.
'There are no more date ones, uncle,' 17-year-old Muhammad Khawla told him — and then reiterated this for his co-workers. 'Guys,' he said, 'there are no more date ones.'
'Oh no, what will I do?' Mr. Muhammad asked himself despondently.
In his hand he held a bag from another bakery with three small marooks, a plain one for him and coconut ones for his two young children. His wife had requested a date marook, and less than half an hour before iftar he was going from bakery to bakery in search of one.
By then the varieties in bakeries across the city had thinned out.
'We don't know exactly what's still left,' said Mr. Khawla, wearing an orange sweatshirt with a Syrian map and the date and time marking the fall of the Assad regime in December. By that point the sweatshirt was smeared with their many flavors on offer: chocolate, pistachio and Biscoff.
Amid the flurry of business, the young men behind the counter didn't always have time to count all the Syrian bills they were being handed by customers. Currency depreciation over the course of the war has meant that even small everyday purchases can require a thick stack of bills.
With only minutes remaining before iftar, seconds can matter, and some customers did not bother waiting for their change.
Mr. Khawla handed over an order of five coconut marooks, five Biscoff-flavored ones and a bubbly to a regular customer, an older man, and stepped away to get his change. When he turned back, holding out a stack of 1,000 Syrian notes, he scanned the thinning crowd for him in vain.
'Where's the hajji?' asked Mr. Khawla, using an honorific for older people.
Then he laughed.
'The hajji has rushed home,' he said.