More Eid stuff

On Eid day itself I slept in and had hot tea when I woke. After checking myself and remembering that yes, Ramzan was over and I really could have tea while the sun was up, that is. One of the special blessings of the fast is how wonderful the simplest foods seem afterwards. It was a lovely cuppa.


The door rang as I was sipping and writing in my journal; upon opening it I encountered a youngish man in shalwar kameez, holding a broom and wishing me Eid Mubarak. Surprised to see him at work on the holiday, I wished him Eid Mubarak as well. He stood expectantly on the landing, looking at me. I looked back in confusion. He repeated his greeting and held up his hand. The light dawned at last--he was asking for Eidi--so I trooped inside and gave him a small bill out of my purse. Apparently this is pretty routine in Pakistan at this time of year. Kind of a neat custom, though like all acts of monitary giving (especially the face-to-face kind) it raises questions of the dignity of the recipient and of "What about the rest of the year? What about a livable wage?" Throughout the morning several more people came by who do work around the apartment complex, and Roomie and I dutifully wished them a blessed Eid and gave them a tip.


I felt a little sad for Roomie, who is accustomed to going to a Chand Raat carnival near her home and then to the mosque in the morning for Eid prayers with her family. Here Chand Raat was pleasant (we got dressed up and went out to a local gelato place with some friends), but of course her home friends and siblings weren't around, and we were told that most of the local mosques either don't have women's sections or the majority of women choose to pray at home. On the upside, we had a five-day weekend off for the holiday, and Roomie invited me to accompany her to her cousin's house on the other side of town on the first day of Eid.


At their home people were coming in and out all day and evening--friends, relatives, adults and kids. We had a great dinner with chicken biryani and a traditional vermicelli pudding for dessert. Her cousins were running around with their friends the whole time, but consented to put on their fancy clothes for us to see them in their finery. (They had changed into play clothes after prayers to go jump on the trampoline.) Little A., aged 7, and her 4-year-old cousin were all decked out in hot-pink and ultraviolet shalwar kameezes with rhinestones and sequins sewn on, and lots of bangles on their arms. Man, I adored pink as a kid--if I'd been a Pakistani seven-year-old I would have died for that outfit. The four-year-old had pink and purple bangles nearly up to her elbow--she was so cute!


When the festivities were winding down and we were getting tired, Cousin J. packed us and all the kids in his little Toyota and took us to the bazaar for ice cream. About nine of us squished into the sedan and slurped at our cones while Cousin J. told stories of his single days studying in California, and the kids swapped goofy jokes.


Q: What do you call a lonely banana?
A: A kela


Yeah, I know it doesn't really work out of context. Telling me this joke was Roomie's way of teaching me the Urdu words for lonely (akela) and banana (kela). Now I'll never forget, and neither will you, I bet. By the way, "hut" also means "get out of the way" in Urdu. So when Pizza Hut arrived in Pakistan there were many jokes along the lines of the following:


Q: What did one pizza say to the other?
A: Pizza, hut!


Hey, I'm just learning, OK??


The last two days of Eid were mellow for me. Roomie went to her khala's house for the second day and I stayed on the couch and tried, unsuccessfully, to fend off my new cold. At one point our former driver, who works for the school, came by with his family to say hello (he has a baby and a three-year-old--too cute!), and then one of my colleagues came over with her husband and kids. (Her son is one of my students.) We had a nice visit and I let the kids play with my camera. This was, in part, to distract the little boy from his new-found entertainment jumping off the back of the sofa--he remains, mercifully, unharmed.