On My Mind: Eid-al-Fitr
I tried making 'Eid Mubarak Obama' a thing as a teenager and failed.
Eid Mubarak to consumers that celebrate and to all of you. Eid Mubarak is both how we wish each other a lovely Eid al-Fitr across the Muslim diaspora, and it’s also the way Iranians wish each other a happy New Year. This year, the holy month of Ramadan concludes at the same time as Iranian New Year, Balinese New Year, UK Mother’s Day, daylight savings time in Europe, and likely another moment of celebration in the world that I’m missing. That all of these things are happening at once feels special — so many of us have something to celebrate today, and aren’t we lucky to have that?
I waited until this morning to read my dear
’s Eid Newsletter — I wanted it to be an Eid treat, something special to mark this big holiday with as I spend it sans family in a new place. I’m glad I waited to read it, it felt like a warm hug dressed in Eid’s finest outfit, and in classic Aminatou style, it brought together so many of my disparate feelings about this day in the context of this year.Muslims are more visible than ever, but last year the Council on America-Islamic Relations recorded the largest number of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints since it began publishing data in 1996. There are Muslim students and academics who have been disappeared into ICE detention within the past few weeks in America — Rumeysa Ozturk was on her way to an iftar with friends when she was detained.
I’m thinking about Kaveh Akbar’s piece in The Nation, if I could suggest some ‘required reading’ to you all, this would be on the list. In one sentence, he nails everything I’m feeling: “There is, in every moment, an at-once-ness that language cannot accommodate.”
The culmination of this piece reminded me of one of my favorite essays, Audre Lorde’s The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, another piece on Roya’s required reading list. It’s on the necessity of speaking up, on taking the ideas and feelings that you are turning about in your head into words, the power that we all possess inherently — we all have voices, how are you going to use yours?
In Khan Yunis this morning, Palestinians performed their Eid Prayers in a school housing displaced people. Amidst the rubble and destruction, in the wake of their own trauma and exhaustion, people have congregated to pray. I am sure many of you reading this aren’t Muslim but I hope that you see the humanity and beauty in this amidst the horror. Eid is meant to be a day of feasting but as I write this, there are roughly three days worth of flour left to feed people in the Gaza Strip.
Photographer Ahmed Al-Arini took photos of Eid morning in Jabalia, the largest of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. There are so many children celebrating despite it all.
I’m thinking about the little ones who are watching Ms. Rachel and their parents who put on a brave face for them. I’m thinking about Ms. Rachel having more integrity than most politicians and public figures.
I’m sure this newsletter has felt meandering, but meandering, wondering, and witnessing are all things that feel core to my relationship with my faith — a relationship that sometimes feels so distant and at other times is so tightly bound within me. Hearing Palestinians call this day “Eid of Sadness” is something that will linger on with me, as this poem by Mosab Abu Toha has since I first heard it last year.
None of us are free until all of us are free. Eid Mubarak.