Every year,
on every day of Eid el Fitr (le ptit Eid), feelings of joy, of achievement and
happiness fill the air and the souls, as you walk around London, the sight of
colourful dresses and happy faces bring a smile to your face (well mine
anyway), so many faithful of so many colours, cultures and countries fill the
streets of London, visit relatives, mosques and generally just seem to float
about parading their joy and enjoying this big reward that is Eid, the day you
get to finally eat in daylight! Oh you black elixir, come hither…
Spending Eid
at work isn’t the best way I could think of enjoying this special day, but one
has not much choice sometimes and one has to do with what one is given. After
so many years away from home, you learn to build yourself a second family with
whom you can share special moments and feel the love (special thought for a
couple of friends who have become our foster parents) with people who
understand how important this day is. After a month of hard core Ramadan
observance, Eid is supposed to be your reward, a day that always fills you with
joy and a high sense of achievement and you wish people understood that, when I
say people I mean people who don’t know much about Ramadan, your non-Muslim
friends or maybe it’s more a case of your non-cultured friends.
A simple
“Happy Eid” will make me feel special, I always explain to my friends that it’s
as close to Xmas for us as it gets yet it remain alien to them. Bah! Who needs
your “Happy Eid” anyway!
But this
year, it’s a different story all together; I am not delving into the joy or
Eid, not because of the measly bowl of porridge I had for breakfast or the poor
quality coffee brewed by the office vending machine, for this big breakfast
day, but it’s more to do with the deterioration of humanity, the suffering and
the plight of the Palestinian and Syrian people at this very moment, killings
of innocent all over Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, who are certainly not
enjoying it for different reasons. Not because they had a bad quality coffee
(it was truly shit) from a vending machine which I suspect to be from the first
world war, but because some of them don’t have anything to eat, nowhere to
live, children are laying down in a hospital bed being treated for war wounds
and limb severance instead of scratches and booboos from the swings and slides,
others are mourning their amounting numbers of dead whilst most of them are
dispossessed, starving, homeless and fighting a powerful occupation backed by:
The silence of the world.
So with the
foul tasting coffee, the heavy heart and few and far in between “Happy Eid”
Wishes, one must learn to be grateful and practice empathy albeit with an after
taste of badly ground beans.
Dz-chick…in
mourning for humanity
