Neon light hums. Underlying tones of keyboards pierced by voices on conference calls. Side chatter. Flurry of action in room 11.03.43. My eyes hurt from the 10 tabs of conflicting requests and multitude of slides and excel sheets and slack conversations.
I flip to Instagram then Facebook, a fleeting habit, and there it is in all its glory – the little tug that reminds you that in your other life, there is a celebration that everyone is gearing up for. Its imminent, the greetings are out, the gatherings are in full display. Eid is thundering.
Via 925 Team
You go back to your work, you shuffle through the day and a twinge of FOMO with a twist of guilt and a pang of nostalgia all hit you at once. You hate missing out on the run up to Eid. The annoying music you heard over and over again at the super market. The flurry of shopping. The frantic phone calls and messages between family and friends all wondering what you are doing for Eid, when and who is going to do what lunch, who has to be with their in-laws on what day, and where you can fit it all in.
The twist of guilt turns into a full-blown tornado as you realize your child will miss out on this too. And your dual lives are imbalanced, you must restore balance, your child must connect with that life too. But your child does not experience that run up. Your child will not have the distant relatives coming over for lunch and have to be reminded who is who because they haven’t seen them in a year and have to be reminded to be polite to everyone. Your child will not partake in the adult hand-out of 3edeya’s.
Your child will not be woken up by the microphone testing from the nearby mosque at three in the morning, will not be excited to go and hand out candy after prayers and have piles of meat for breakfast at our crazy friends’ family house where everyone meets for breakfast every year. Your child will not see the street vendors selling their hats and noisy blow whistles or see the other kids and families in their fancy new clothes. Your child will not understand why you are soon going to be standing in the living room arguing about some last-minute shopping to go buy her new clothes because there is a celebration which no one else seems to celebrate.
She will not understand why it’s so important for you to spend hours cooking and dragging everyone out to an excursion and being handed brand new cash. She knows you do it every year, last minute, like a hurricane that comes over you and she will comply while protesting and she will not understand why this is so important to you. The nostalgia is never appeased with your attempts at repeating rituals that seem misplaced and strange.
I grab my keys, and leave the office, and drive down highway 101 and instead of the radio, I put on some 3adawiya, music I never used to listen to in the bubble of the city I used to live in. I hope that the strange yet familiar onslaught, on some level, restores my connection with that other life.
Happy Eid.
p.s. the 101 is the alternative of da’ery.. za7ma ya Donya za7ma.
