Naem

The recipe has two ingredients: flour and water. The dough is rolled into thin discs a month or two before Ramadan and left to dry. Once the month begins those dry discs are fried, brushed while hot with date or grape molasses, and finished with a grater passed over the top. Damascus has been making it in that order for close to two hundred years.

Why only in Ramadan

Production starts on the first day of the month and stops on the last. For the rest of the year naem is not made at all — you do not look for it in a sweet shop window; it appears with the stalls that come out into the street. Seeing a naem stall in Damascus tells you what month it is.

Where it is sold

Not in a shop but on the street, with the frying done at the stall in front of the customer. The selling points named in press reports:

• Bab Sarija market
• Souq al-Qazzazin
• Jazmatiyah market in Midan

Bread of the poor

Among its names are bread of the poor and Ramadan bread: the ingredients cost little and the labour is long. As flour and oil prices climbed in recent years, whether that name still holds became an argument in the Syrian press. Asking the price at the stall is now ordinary.

How it is eaten

Hot, where it was fried. Maarouk is sold beside it; the two share a stall, a month, and usually the same news report.