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.