MIDDLE EAST: Muslims are marking the holy month of Ramadan. Michael Jansen reports from Jerusalem where Ramadan's other imperative - peacemaking - comes a distant second
Annan stops the car just long enough for me to jump into the back seat next to a large tightly covered pot and a stack of boxes exuding the rich aroma of freshly baked meat pasties.
When I remark on the pot, Dyala, a slender woman in tailored jacket and trousers, chuckles and says: "There are another 11 in the boot."
We are on our way to the Old City with breakfast for 100 people and only half-an-hour to get the food to the community centre known as Bourj al-Laklak, the Tower of the Pelican.
But hungry East Jerusalem is on the move. Working men and women and children finishing the second school shift are hurrying home for the evening meal, the iftar, which breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast in this holy month of Ramadan.
Sunglasses perched on his bald head, Annan wheels the car through the stream of cars, lorries, vans and motor bikes jamming the streets leading to the walled city. Finally he bumps up on the pavement just outside Harod's Gate, opposite the post office.
A posse of boys - the shebab - springs from nowhere and begins to carry away pots, still warm from the baker's oven in the suburb of Beit Hanina where the meal was prepared. Three lads turn up with a four-wheeled barrow which they load with mysterious boxes, the pasties and flat parcels of sweets.
The route is difficult, over wet stone cobbles, up rough steps and around tight corners, but in no time the shebab are filling plates with fat dates to break the long fast, salad and pastries and setting them on the blue and white checked cloths covering the tables. At 4.35 p.m. they begin to serve the main dish, pieces of lamb with tumeric-flavoured rice.
At precisely 4.41 p.m., the flat report of a cannon announces the end of the fast. Children who come to the morning kindergarten at the centre or attend afternoon craft classes, or the lads who play football in the field, slip shyly into their places at the two tables piled with food provided by the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates.
The children and youths are clean and tidy and eat quietly, gravely.
During Ramadan, it is traditional for the rich to share their wealth with the poor. Every night the Emirates Red Crescent hosts several iftars for the hard-pressed people of Jerusalem. To be generous is to be blessed.
This is a harsh, lean year for the Palestinians of this city. Many wage-earners have no work, there little money for food, none for clothing or heating during the cold nights. The poor manual labourers live here, in Bab al-Hutta, the Gate of the Travellers' Halt.
After the meal, a few of the lads say their prayers. When they finish, Dyala calls an impromptu meeting to discuss the security situation.
Last week a seven-year-old Palestinian boy was brutally murdered by a drug addict not far from here. Drug-taking and wife- and child-beating are on the rise.
"This violence is the product of the anger and despair caused by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," Dyala remarks, then she chides the tough, tall, broad-shouldered shebab.
"You must do something. Children are not safe in the streets."
One retorts: "We don't have a leader." "Yes," she responds, "you are the leaders, make a committee and decide what to do."
Ramadan is a month of peacemaking as well as fasting. Here in the Old City, Palestinians must bring peace back to their own neighbourhoods, although peace with Israel has eluded them.