The confusion and globally staggered breaking of fasts is because "the orbit of the moon around the earth is such that it can take up to three days for the whole world to actually see the crescent for the first time each month, even after clouds have cleared" (Usama Hasan again). All very charming and antiquated. But when can I eat? The irony of it all struck me while immersed in web 2.0, emailing, and trawling Facebook and Twitter for Eid verification. Surely, in this day and age, there must be a more technologically advanced way of determining whether the moon is in waxing or waning crescent other than waiting for religious representatives to spot it with the naked eye.
When our kid used to go round to his mate’s after school during Ramadan, everyone would be sitting round the kitchen table staring at a mobile ceremoniously placed in the middle. Meanwhile there’d be lots of pots on the stove and all those wonderful cooking smells the racists used to complain about. You could hear all the pots bubbling because there was absolute silence until the mosque texted. Then, food glorious food.
There were lots of fractious kids around the neighborhood today, all scrubbed clean, dressed to impress Kashmiri style and obviously aching for sunset. It reminded me a bit of first communion, and the first communion breakfast that followed, except that I got to eat my blancmange in daylight.
Many of the staff at Tesco were wearing Eid Mubarak badges and there were POS stands offering crappy little Eid funbooks. Parents were taking them and thrusting them hopefully into little hands; but no, the kids weren’t having any. ‘Atheists of the future in training’ was my first thought, but I don’t suppose it’s anywhere near that simple.
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