Almost like a 'sadness button' is pushed, triggering the tear duct hose, and pulling the throat muscles back.. Making way for the flood of warmth and wetness, and occassional intakes of breath that can relieve chest heaviness like nothing else.
It's eid today. And I guess motanaby's phrase " و بأى حال جئت يا عيد" resonates in my head, for many meanings which he may not have even alluded to..
وبأى حال جاء عيدى...أحقاًِ جاء عيدى؟؟
لن أجده بعد
I thought to myself this morning, if it is "Eid" that comes or "el" "eid"...
If it is merely 'eid' that comes, than it is an event, and in reply to the question "El nahardah eid?" you can either answer ' yes' or 'no'.. the question of whether or not you celebrate it, goes back to you..
However if it's "el" "eid", than it is the time for it.. it's the time we've been anticipating and waiting for and it 'comes'.
The notion of the 'coming' of days and occassions, was revealed to me as quite delusionary this ramadan. I waited for the 'ramdan feeling' to come and it never did..
Eventually though, it came to make sense.
Ramadan started late october, and no day was realy any different than the other; it's just the series of events that hit Cairo in ramadan that hit you like a wave and take you through the summersaults and turbulences, the peaks and troughts, the ecstacy and the mere starvation, one day after the other, till your thrown on the sunny shores of a warm comfortable and even lazier eid...
Eid meant family, above anything else, it meant new clothes. It meant kahk, smiley faces adn cheerful moods regardless of what might be going on inside you..
It meant going out somewhere new, enjoying old familiar warm, favored company..
We didn't get to buy our new clothes here, as it just never seemed to gain enough priority to push it up the list..
There's realy no time for spending much time together as there is work, and a number of other commitments taht seemed to have pushed themself above el eid, no matter how high up i tried to push it, at least on the day that was attributed to it.
It scares me.
It scares me that something is practiced beautifuly and sacredly my whole life through, and suddenly on discounting a few physical experiences (a meal with a loved one, an outing, new garments), i loose it...
Needless to say, i have not made us worthy of a 'eid coming' or a 'eid visit'.
And so i start my day alone, with clothes that wear me well, with little excitement, except for the fact , that once again, i can have my cheese sandwhiches for breakfast... my cookies whenever i please.
The day is no longer crammed into it's last few hours; the world is mine to explore and experience any time of day..
But what if it never comes again?
What if i can no longer enjoy the 'break', the way everything stops, and all pays head to family traditions, to big gatherings, to little work and much play, to laughter and ka7k adn jokes and laziness and phonecalls and giggles, warm hearts and the excitment of wearing something 'NEW'.
The carefreeness that can turn us all to children.
Life proceeds normally in this busy london where everyone is going or coming from somewhere.. and where i to shall join in, on my somehwere... and back again.
Maybe it'll all stop for christmas. And there will be taht laziness and specialness... Maybe i should start investing in trees and gifts under the trees.
Will it matter?
It will not be about the event that christmas stands for, but all that christmas at teh heart of it signifies. It will be about warmth, togetherness and the excitment of making someone happy and the anticipation of all that has been done for you...
We make our own worlds; true.
Perhaps my eid was warmer and more significant than that of others...
Will i re-experience it once i return to Egypt? or does it change shape and form, as my role as my parent's daughter adn a member of that warm nuclear family changed shape and form as well as i tore myself out of it...
Or maybe it's floating around in all the confusion floating around me as i unsettled all the dust that are my values, priorities, objectives adn aspirations as i make several new steps on unfamiliar, but much cherished grounds...
I guess only time will tell.
Time for my legitimized cookies..
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