Cezna tan piroz bet. This message is scattered everywhere over my homepage in Facebook today. There is also an "Eid Mubarak" text message from a Baghdadi student and a couple of calls from Turkish friends wishing me an "Iyi Bayram." I'd like to pass these wishes on to all of my readers. The day here started nicely. At 5:30, I awoke to the sounds of praying. One of my friends here actually went to the Great Mosque (I forget the local name of this mosque - more on this later) near the intersection of Shoresh for the prayers around 6:10 am. I heard that after the salah (Eid prayers), the imam gave an inspiring sermon. And perhaps most moving is that before going home for breakfast, the congregation - Kurds, Arabs from both Iraq and abroad, Turks, etc - irrespective of their social or financial status, all greeted and shook hands with each other.
And so the day started... Now it is the afternoon and I am still too full after a large breakfast consumed on the balcony to think about lunch. Mu, Haci and all the other Kurds from Turkey (and possibly our other Kurdish staff from the diaspora) are likely all out visiting now. I don't know if the customs here are the same as in Turkey, but my fridge is stocked with chocolates in case any children come around. Apparently, Eid al Fitr is called Şeker Bayramı (Sugar Eid) in Turkey as the children are given sweets. They then kiss the hands of the adults and press it to their foreheads, following which the adults will kiss their cheeks and give them money (to buy more sweets?).
In any case, I want to thank Iraq-nam blogger for the photo of the mosque. I will try to take one of my own to replace this soon. (Picture and story appear over 2/3s down the page in an article about Kurdish ministry renaming mosques).
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