Happy Eid!

Happy Eid! It's finally over. Finally. I'm so excited that I will have steaming hot coffee tomorrow curled up on my sofa, absorbing the morning or rather noon. This is as opposed to the usual grumpy faced zombie-march I transport myself to work with. During the holy month of Ramadan I would usually wake up VERY resentful that my husband is still sleeping. After failing to annoy him out of bed, I’d go to brush my teeth, pull my hair into a semi-respectable pony tail while muttering unholy nothings under my breath.

As I drag my feet out the door, there is an evil vs. good battle raging in my head. "Go to sleep!" "Go to work!" "Go to sleep!" "Go to work!" and so it goes, all the way to the parking lot at the office. And everyday as I walk in fasting my sins away, my colleagues would look at me and giggle, because I look comically angry at the morning for ever existing. Why? Why must one wake up? It's so painful without caffeine. I hate people who look amazing so early in the day. How? Did you start last night? I look so pretty at night, everything snaps back into place at around 11pm. In the morning, my features are rearranged and slightly out of shape. My nose looks koala-ish and my eyes are unamused, my mouth goes all funny parrot beak shaped. I don't get it but I think it's genetic, because my brother has the same "booz" upon rising.

And then the challenge begins. Making important phone calls where you have to explain a lot of technical details and give historical backgrounds is very difficult when you’re running on empty, and not really embracing your fast.

“Hello?”

“blableee boo boo mumu plee plee…”

“Hello?!”

“Sorry, Good Morning, can I please…bleh fur miskru me mo?”

Dial tone…

Okay, forget verbal communication, let’s go to email. It might take an hour to type something coherent, but at least I can click send when I’m good and ready.

Yes my friends, when you fast you feel humbled. You taste the hunger of the poor and the challenges of the deprived and ultimately the stupidity of the unintelligent.

So now that Eid is upon us, I’m going back to step class, spinning and the occasional jog around the compound. The only exercise I did for the past month was leaning forward to get the remote, and then the hourly clicking from one tragedy “musalsal” to the other. That motivated me less to move, and more to cry in mourning for the non-existence of creativity in khaleeji TV productions. (This will be addressed in another post, soon, while it’s still FRESH in my mind)

But before I “happy” myself to death, I have to plan what I’m wearing tomorrow and how I’m going to survive/avoid the 247 family visits that I’m told I have to make in one morning.

Oh, didn’t I tell them? I don’t do Eid in the mornings. Eid is a noon thing. I wake up and go to lunch at my grandfather’s house, the meeting point. And then I get tired. By 5pm I want to toss my shoes off, put my hair up in a bun, and wear my tracksuit. I start falling apart like the pumpkin carriage on Cinderella’s way back home.

Wish me luck. I’ll either be home at 5pm, or sitting miserably somewhere politely smiling on the outside and nodding at people, who keep asking me who my mother is and when I’m gonna get pregnant.