Over the few past evenings the streets filled up in some districts of Dammam and Alkhobar alongside other Gulf countries with a celebration of one of the oldest traditional Gulf festivities called Qarkaan. Boys and girls celebrate the occasion which revives the traditional festive spirit mingled with folklore, year after year.
During the afternoon hours children go out with their bag, skipping from house to house, through the alleys and neighborhoods collecting all sorts of treats like money, sweets and nuts as they sing traditional songs. Families prepare their streets for the festive occasion with decorations and by hanging lights on their houses.
Streets, patios and neighborhood squares fill with people. In Qatif young men hang palm tree leaves and bows of colored lights and other decorations over the street furniture. They stop passing cars to sprinkle their drivers and passengers with rose water, wafting them with incense and offering them sweets and cold drinks. Car drivers find themselves delayed by barriers of festive crowds and barrages of loudspeakers calling to the merrymakers and welcoming them.
Al-Qarkaan is one of the few festive traditions that has stood its ground before the onslaught of the digital age. Every year this tradition knocks on front doors with its childhood memories, lighting up the alleys with small bright joys. It is a time when boys and girls can join in together in innocent play, going out side by side and bring to life a ancient tradition.
Children scatter all over neighbourhoods to knock on front doors and receive gifts. They call this day “alnasifah” which is derived from the word “nisf” meaning half, so named because it comes in the middle of the Arabic month Shabaan and is repeated once more in the blessed month of Ramadan.
In the past the children would chant “Qarkaan give us from what God has given you, and to Makkah we will take you.”
In the Gulf countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait and Emirates and even Oman the tradition is similar to that in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.
In Kuwait and Emirates, the children chant “Give us what God gave you. God bless you, to God’s house may you go, and may poverty never know its way to your door.”
Some children receive money as a gift, as well as sweets and peanuts. When the children are given money, sweets or peanuts, they answer chantingly “May every year, each year be with goodness and peace.î”
Al-Qarkaan was an occasion to acknowledge and reinforce ties between people symbolizing their unity. The custom began as a means of breaking down of barriers and making people accessible to each other. It established the bonds of social solidarity making the people of a village or neighborhood as one.
