Eid al-Adha

Working in an international school, you sometimes forget where you are really living. First, you don't speak Arabic at your work, which is the place you spend most part of your day. Even if the school has many native people, they speak the school language - English in our case. Then, you live in this "third culture" environment, as anthropologists call it. This mix of cultures: not the local culture, not your culture, not also the official culture - which would be american in our case, just because we use an American curriculum.

Then, you come across a scene like this:

And you remember: oh, yeah, I am living in the Middle East. And Eid al-Adha is coming (it's not because it's MENA that you'll see it everyday. A propos, in Brazil, I could sometimes spot a similar scene near where my parent's house is).

Today is the first day of Eid al-Adha. It means "Feast of Sacrifice",when Muslims celebrate that God provided a sheep to Abraham, so that he could save his son Isaac's life of being sacrificed. You can find the narrative in Genesis, a holy book for both Jews, Christians and Muslims, but the prescription of the Eid al-Adha comes from the Koran.

There is an special prayer for Eid al-Adha and people should dress their best clothes for it. Also, the rams in the photo are for sacrifice. If you have the economic means to buy an animal (it could also be a cow, or a sheep, or a camel, or a goat), you will sacrifice it. One third is for you and your family,one third for your relatives and friends, one third for the poor.

According to an information found in Wikipedia, "in Pakistan alone nearly 10 million animals are slaughtered on Eid days costing over US$ 3 billion". A holy day is also a possibility for a ceasefire when you have a war going on, like in Syria. Unfortunatly, an official truce doesn't mean it will really happen. You can check about Syria in the Al Jazeera's website.

For more information about the Eid al-Adha's traditions and practices, check out the Wikipedia's article. 

One week with Mom & Dad... WOW!

So, it really happened. Mom and dad came here and spent one week with me. After so many months dreaming and talking about, they appeared in that fateful arrival gate.

My "Lonely Planet Guide" gave the best description of the city so far: embrace the apparent chaos, crack a joke and learn to look through the dirt to see the city's true colours. Although the North is very different from the South and the capital different of everything, I would say that the description applies to the country. So we had one week together to see the true colours, listen the true sounds and taste the true flavours.

Here are some of the most remarkable moments:

1) Mom could cross the streets like a local in two days. It took me five months...
2) They both think the drivers here are the best in the world. With such a crazy traffic, so little car crashes...
3) Dad declared if he lived here he would only get taxi drives. Dirty cheap! 
4) They loved the onions, the tomatoes (actual red, with actual tomato's taste), "aish baladi" (the local bread), the nuts, the dates, the grapes (and this one was far from the best ones in high Summer), not to mention the fresh fruit juices;
5) They also learned some words of Arabic. I am very proud of this.
6) One week here and they saw a bit of rain. I'm here for six months and it was my first time too. 2 minutes of rain, but I was more than excited about that.
7) I was the one who wanted to come back home early, they were the ones asking: what are we doing next? 
8) They were marvelled by the desert, by the contrast between the desert and the sapphire blue sea, by the contrast of the green farming and desert along the road;
9) They tasted Turkish coffee - not filtered and flavoured with cardamom. But with so many different things to experiment with, they didn't have time to eat Turkish delight!
10) Finally, after seeing the biggest shopping mall of the Middle East, dad concluded: well, you can live well here. 

And then they went away. I love it here. But I miss them tenderly. And my dear friends: I miss you all. When are you coming to to look through the dirt to see the city's true colours?