Ramadan, the Roman Way

The Arab alimentari El Zayat in Rome’s Marconi neighborhood has the familiar din of a minimarket in Cairo. Twinkling lights curtain the facade and a plastic battery-powered sign blinks “Ramadan Kareem.” Customers and staff banter in Arabic, with a few sprinklings of Italian here and there. In a quiet moment between chops on the halal butcher’s block, an elderly man in a top hat — the only other obvious non-Arab in the store — asks me in Italian whether this or that spice would ta