Christmas, Islamic New Year and a very a sad Eid



It's Christmas today! Around this time of the year I usually wish my friends who observe this feast a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to my American friends whose political correctness has rubbed a little on me because they actually feel uncomfortable when you openly congratulate them on Christmas. But funnily enough if they are Jews then they expect you to acknowledge that – no political correctness there – in fact they would tell me straight – I'm Jewish. Almost making you feel guilty that somehow you offended them. I'm never offended if someone wishes me Merry Christmas or Shana Tova, 99.9% of the time the non-Arabs that I know be it in business or a more friendly settings do never wish me a Eid Mabrouk or even Happy Eid and I don't really take offense but I'm revising my attitude and as I said above; from now on I will only bother about those who have actually at one point or another shown some attention. A few occasions will be coming up and those would be my yardstick – just give the same treatment, no longer trying to be better :).

Well this weekend it's Christmas and last weekend was Hijri New Year, no one brought this up on the Libyan blogosphere except for OTE , I think (thank you), and Happy New Hijri Year to Muslims on a global scale. This New Year dawned on me discreetly again some wondered which day it would be exactly, just like the Eid Adha this year 2009.

Flashback to older posts:" this feast is the most important one in the Islamic world. If they are not performing Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca than the majority of Muslims will sacrifice a sheep on the first day and distribute most of it to the poor people. But the Eid is also very much a family day. Muslims go in the morning to the special Eid prayer and when it ends they return home in processions chanting Allahu Akbar (God is Great [.this is the Takbir.] After the prayers, the families who are making a sacrifice in honour of the Jewish Prophet Abraham who was ordered to prove his faith by sacrificing his own son and who was saved from doing this at the last minute by God.[…] However the Eid is only the culmination of the period of the pilgrimage or Hajj".


This year's Eid Adha was like no other, I was in a Mulsim country but could not hear the Takbir. On entering Mecca the Takbir was recited by the Muslims, and when I hear it on the Eid I am so overwhelmed that my skin tingles and my heart squeezes and I feel the faith being renewed in my soul.


I have not recovered since from this melancholic feeling.. I call it the saddest Eid of all and if you want to know why then come back to read me in couple of days…

When in trouble we are all brothers and sisters

"People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within"

" In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would be split off into different directions"

from Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.

I bought this bought on pure impulse, it is only 150 pages long, but every page made me think deeply about what is it the author wanted to convey: our ultimate mortality.

Although the style is in an irregular narrative sequence and the events are not chronologically or linearly drawn but that is its charm and the sentences are so concise, the words so precise and full of meaning between the lines. I loved the simplicity and I loved how it was able to jerk tears from my eyes not only because of the tragedy of romantic love but also the frailty of human condition, transgressing time, body and space.

Have you read her books ?

Type rest of the post here