On 27 May 2017, the first day of Ramadan, lines formed at eateries and bakeries in Doha several hours before sunset. A single worker joined a long queue at a bakery in Matar Qadeem, while customers waited at the hot-food counter of LuLu Hypermarket. Another store prepared up to 500 iftar kits a day for bachelors in the Industrial Area, each priced at twelve riyals and containing light food, water and juice.
Unlike ordinary dinner demand, everyone's eating time converged at sunset. These were not merely queues for fashionable shops; the religious calendar compressed a city's food purchases into the same few hours.