Eid, a Celebration of the End of Ramadan

Eid in my house is always the same every year, but instead of being a monotonous affair, it’s become a much anticipated tradition. My father and brother attend the earliest Eid prayers, and my mother drags me out of bed because I refuse to be alert at the hideously early hour of 6am. I always take my time getting dressed in my newest pair of shalwar kameez while my mother puts the finishing touches on the halwa that she prepared the night before in anticipation of the holiday.

After prayers, my entire extended family gathers at my house and indulges in a delectable, traditional Pakistani breakfast of puris, halwa, aloo, chole, and sheer khorma. The kitchen floor is covered with plastic bags displaying raw puris that need to be deep fried, and my aunts prepare the rest of the breakfast with my mother while my cousins run around the house or play video games and my uncles watch Geo TV. Later, my cousins and I scheme about the best methods of extorting Eidi from our uncles, some of whom make it notoriously difficult. I always end up being the emissary for the rest of the group, because I am one of the few older cousins who is not ashamed to pander for money. It’s a loud, robust holiday for us, with its distinct rituals, flavors, and foods.

However, I believe that the last Eid I celebrated with my family was probably six years ago, in my freshman year of college when Eid coincided with Thanksgiving break. That was also a confusing one for me, as I was attending college in Boston, where the Muslim community had started its fast one day before my parents did, but I celebrated Eid with my family in New Jersey, where the community fasted for one day less than I had. This split was by no means atypical, and at times, the divide over Ramadan has had a clearly demarcated cultural and ethnic face, as the Arab Muslims followed Saudia Arabia’s declaration of the first day of Ramadan while the Pakistani Muslims followed Pakistan’s declaration. I had never been cognizant of these disputes because they had never really affected me, since when I lived at home, I just followed whatever my parents decided to do, and most of the Muslims in my community—many of whom were South Asian—tended to celebrate on the same day. Yet when I went to college, and the imam declared the beginning of Ramadan, I called home and wished my parents Ramadan Mubarak. Their confused reaction –“You’re one day early!” my mother told me—shocked me with the realization that now I was in a state of discordance with my parents. It was strange to be fasting when my parents, who had always been my guides in spirituality and religion, were not fasting, and I resented the semantic divides that cleaved the beginning of the holy month for my parents and me. The questions of moon sighting versus calculations, or whether we should follow Saudia Arabia considering that we would have to follow their calendar for Hajj, were not uniquely interesting to me, and at first, I wanted to follow the calendar to which my parents were adhering. Although I had to follow the local community, I felt a certain degree of sadness about this deviation from the norm.

Since then I have been fortunate enough that even though Ramadan has begun on multiple days—one year there were three “first” days of Ramadan from within different communities—and the controversy over the inception of the month has continued, my parents and I have miraculously followed the same calendar, even though I continue to live in Boston. Yet other issues have separated me from my family’s celebration of this month. Participating in family celebrations has become harder and harder as I become busier with school work, and now in medical school, it is virtually impossible to go home for Eid and celebrate it in the tradition that my parents established decades ago. My life is a whirlwind of exams, patient visits, and classes, and I cannot find the time to take time off from school to go home for Eid. This physical distance necessarily leads to some degree of emotional distance as well, and when I call home to wish everyone Eid Mubarak, I feel isolated, as though I am intruding on a celebration that I used to be a part of but no longer am. My generation in America is one that is highly mobile and lives in a society in constant flux, but this lifestyle can feel as though our home base is only the stuff of memories. Perhaps, in some way, it is—the memories of warm puris and gleeful children’s laughter, of playful haggling with my uncles for Eidi—and therefore can be wrapped up and taken with us wherever we happen to be.

Not My Representative

The nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate has deeply angered me, and not only because I am an ardent supporter of Senator Barack Obama. To be honest, I probably would not have been as angry if McCain had chosen a man who was pro-life, whose only foreign policy experience was, as she so quaintly put it, living in Alaska, and whose solution to the oil crisis was not to think of more sustainable ways to live our lives but to further exploit our natural resources and environment by drilling in Alaska. In and of themselves, these issues are significant enough that I would not vote for such a candidate, but I would not be as angry as I am now. No, the reason I am angry is the fact that the Republicans chose Sarah Palin as the first female nominee for their party.

Their choice personifies the disregard that the party has for female intellect. The Republicans have their fair share of talented, intelligent, politically savvy and experienced women, and instead of choosing a woman who exemplified those qualities, they chose Palin. They sifted through their party, thought about picking a woman, and nominated the one who was the least qualified to run the country. Instead of picking someone who might actually be McCain's equal, they chose someone who would always be considered not only his junior in terms of experience and age, but also in terms of analytical and intellectual ability. Palin is by no means stupid—the former beauty queen knows how to package herself well enough to become governor of Alaska and then the Republican VP candidate--but she is also brash and ignorant of global affairs (since when can one see Russia from Alaska?). Her time in office has been marred by hints of political scandal that force me to question her ethical system. She promotes family values but lacks moral direction when it comes to firing people she does not like. For someone who represents the first woman on the Republican ticket, she is doing a pretty terrible job.

The Republicans and Sarah Palin herself claim that she is the typical American mom and represents the average American woman. As an American woman, I refuse to be represented by someone like her, who is so uncomfortable with her femininity that she claims to wear "school-marm glasses" to make herself look less attractive. Not only is that statement insulting to men (obviously they cannot think straight around attractive women), but it's also offensive to women (of course all bespectacled women are unattractive!). Her resume and educational level are less than impressive, but that did not seem to matter at the Republican National Convention where cameras focused on Palin sitting next to Cindy McCain cradling her five month old infant. Palin's image as a good mother was emphasized much more than her image as an experienced candidate. The message was clear: that was a woman's role, not going to Yale Law School and being a senator of one of the most populous states in the country and then running for president.

The contrast between Palin and Hillary Clinton could not be starker. Clinton is a woman who has achieved significant, tangible goals. She, too, has raised a family, yet no one is calling her the prototypical American woman. She is a highly educated woman with a formidable grasp of policies and global affairs, and even though I did not agree with her stances and vehemently oppose her decision to support the Iraq war, I still respect her, which is not something I can say of Palin. Palin has nothing to recommend her as a future VP, whereas Clinton would at least have been qualified for her position as president.

Palin now has the honor of being the first female nominee on a major party's ticket, and that rankles, because she is not a woman who is uniquely qualified for anything. To think that she represents an honor that shows how far women have advanced in American politics seems to be a travesty to me.

The Insinuations of Terror

Since I returned from Mumbai three weeks ago, I have had some time to reflect on my experiences there, especially as a Pakistani. While I was there this summer I noticed that the media, although not the ordinary people I came into contact with, was distinctly unfriendly towards Pakistan. About two months ago, , Pakistani and Indian border patrols got into a skirmish which each side blamed on the other for starting. The Hindustan Times, a prominent English-language newspaper, reported that of course the Pakistanis would claim innocence and implied that Pakistan had instigated the skirmish. This skirmish was followed by the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, and again, rumors spread that the ISI was behind the bombings. In fact, India's national security advisor, M. K. Narayanan, advocated that the ISI "should be destroyed". Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, even proposed that the Taliban was being managed by the ISI as a tool of foreign policy. Apparently, he had conveniently forgotten the suicide bombings and violence that Taliban-trained fighters have wreaked on Pakistan.

The cycle of pointing fingers at Pakistan without substantive evidence continued with the bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad on July 25th and 26th. Almost immediately, the media accused Pakistan, or more specifically, the ISI, of having a hand in the bombings. Although a shadowy organization named the Indian Muhajideen claimed responsibility for the bombings via an email sent to the media, rumors arose of this organization being nothing more than a front for the ISI. In fact, just two hours after the last bomb exploded in Ahmedabad, a newscaster announced that Pakistan probably had a hand in the bombings.

The days following the attacks were tense. The multiple bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad had put the country on high alert, and the media kept showing sensationalistic images of streets running with blood after a bomb exploded outside of a hospital in Ahmedabad. Escalating violence between Pakistan and India only provided further circumstantial proof that Pakistan was involved in the recent terrorist attacks. On July 28th, at the Line of Control in Kashmir, Pakistani soldiers opened fire on Indian soldiers, killing one. In retaliation, Indian soldiers returned fire and killed four Pakistani soldiers.

The violence in India has been terrible, but I find the claims against Pakistan to be slightly absurd at times. Pakistan certainly is partly at fault for the situation in Kashmir, but of course the Indian troops also share the responsibility of the violence. The bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad to me definitely seem homegrown, but it seems that because the Indian government cannot find other culprits, it picks the target that has historically had many altercations and bloody disagreements with India: Pakistan. Pakistan has become a convenient scapegoat for the Indian government; instead of working to apprehend domestic terrorists, it blames Pakistan for infiltrating the country and seeding terror throughout India.

Yet the situation in Afghanistan certainly makes matters murkier by implicating the ISI; in fact, the Afghan government blamed the ISI for the bombing. Although the C.I.A. has not supported the Afghan government’s assertions that Pakistan had a hand in the bombing of the Indian embassy, the agency has complicated matters by presenting evidence to Pakistan suggesting that members of the ISI have cultivated ties with militant groups operating in Afghanistan. The nature of these relationships remains obscure, as does the exact involvement of the ISI in the escalating violence in Afghanistan. Yet the implications are tangible. As the US questions the ISI’s policies and its loyalties, this provides further room for conjecture on the part of the Indian press that perhaps Pakistan really has been behind all the terrorist attacks on India. It also makes it easier to believe that if the ISI has connections to the militants in Afghanistan, then it may also have connections to a group such as the Indian Muhajideen.

Where does the truth lie? The secretive ISI certainly commands a good portion of it. The recent C.I.A. evidence makes it obvious that the ISI has not been forthright about the extent of its dealings in Afghanistan, and the Pakistani government should increase the accountability of the ISI. Yet this does not mean that the next logical leap would be to blame the ISI for the attacks in India.

The relationship between India and Pakistan has a long way to go before the two countries are completely reconciled to each other. These past two months have been especially tense ones for the two countries, with multiple incidents of violence disrupting the ceasefire in Kashmir and the hesitant peace between the two countries, and do not bode well for the future. America’s most prominent South Asian allies have to work at becoming allies with each other as well.