Slice of Ramadan from Hebron to Dunedin: 'I hardly cooked in my house'

We've heard about Santa's little helpers spreading joy to children in December, but in Dunedin, Mai Tamimi and volunteers gather to wrap hundreds of gifts for children in March.

It's to celebrate Eid al-Fitr - marking the end of daily fasting during the Islamic month of Ramadan - when families and friends share greetings and food, give charity as well as small cash and gifts to children and reflect on their deeds and actions for the year.

Tamimi, a semi-finalist for the 2025 New Zealand Local Hero of the Year Award, says they hand out gifts at their local mosque on Eid al-Fitr so Muslim children get a taste of their Islamic traditions and customs.

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Originally from West Bank's Hebron, Tamimi is a team leader of community partnerships at Dunedin City Council and is known for promoting cultural diversity and community wellbeing, with a focus on women and youth. She was appointed as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2022 for her services to ethnic communities.

"We have a very generous community and we have some organisations who annually donate some items and we put them together. I store some in my place and some in another place and then we get together before Eid and wrap them.

"Sometimes as Muslims, we will be, toward the end of Ramadan, very tired. So the non-Muslim sisters, they would take care of wrapping and preparing them and then we go to prayers on Eid day, they will be waiting there with the gifts so when the kids are out of salah, out of prayers, they will give them those gifts.

"It's also important for raising our kids and for them to understand the differences and also to enjoy the beauty of the different cultures."

Although her daughter Rinad is 30 years old, Tamimi's father in Hebron still gives her an Eid money gift, with what little pension he gets in the difficult economic situation, she says. A United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report cited by Reuters in September last year said Gaza's economy had shrunk to less than a sixth of its size when the Israel-Hamas war began, while unemployment in the occupied West Bank nearly tripled.

"When he does that, he feels that he's still here, he's contributing, that nothing has changed, regardless," Tamimi says.

"So this is part of I think the steadfastness, this is part of the sumood [resilience] that we maintain those traditions because, as my daughter mentioned, this is something that's very special for her."

With Dunedin being one of the refugee resettlement cities, the Muslim community also have a cooking and cleaning schedule at the mosque during Ramadan, so each day a group cooks their cuisine for iftar, the meal at which they break their fast after sunset, Tamimi says.

"You will see it's become a multi-cultural cuisine - like today is Palestinian cooking, [another day] Iraqi cooking, [then] Pakistani, you know, so you get to enjoy the taste from different cultures."

Mai Tamimi says they were invited to eat at friends and familes' houses so often in Hebron during Ramadan, that she hardly cooked. (Pictured is women gathered in Hebron, baking cookies before Eid in April 2022.)

With the conflict lingering on the Tamimi family's mind, Rinad is reminded of the privileges Kiwi Muslims enjoy while some Palestinians have not had a choice in living on an empty stomach as aid was choked at the height of the conflict.

Last year, Tamimi says she and some of her non-Muslim colleagues started fasting before Ramadan in solidarity with the internally displaced Gazans who didn't have the means to feed their families or access to safe shelter.

"I cannot imagine how they are going to cope to be honest, on different fronts, you think about it that people are struggling … even those who have got the means, they are struggling mentally and psychologically, emotionally, with the magnitude and reality they live in.

"You would like to enjoy the meal after fasting the whole day and be spiritually contemplating and reflecting - but for them, it was even if they have the meal in front of them, it might be like an air strike happening that would shatter everything and it's the feeling of safety they don't have, they are always concerned, they are always afraid that something might happen."

Mai Tamimi also remembers picking up pickled side dishes from the stalls on the streets of Hebron to complement their iftar meal during Ramadan.

Tamimi recalls how growing up in Hebron, Ramadan was a time of family gatherings but it was increasingly difficult for families to have free access between cities at times of conflict.

"I remember that in some Ramadan [months], subhanallah [glory be to Allah], like 29 or 30 days, I hardly cooked in my house. I had a big family, so I'm invited every single night for iftar and we go for iftar and we do the prayers."

She hopes the ceasefire agreement, has given families a chance to be able to observe Ramadan in a better shape than last year.