Saturday, October 21, 2006

Eid Mubarak

We're upon the holiday season here and a week or so off. We're not sure yet how long the holidays are supposed to be, so preemptively we gave the national staff tomorrow off. Eid will either be Sunday or Monday, depending on the moon sighting here. I'm used to a calendar dictated Ramazan and Eid, so the "traditional" moon sighted style is kinda nice. Nice in that it got our national staff a day off, and though expats have to work tomorrow, when there is no national staff around, it makes for slow days. The best part is we have 6 days of slow days. Eid being a 3 day holiday starting either Sunday or Monday (for the Gov't, but we are doing a 4 day holiday) till Wednesday and with Friday being the weekend, the day between is a holiday. I think we're celebrating Columbus Day, so expats get that day off too. No jokes about colonialism part of that holiday and the irony of celebrating it in Afghanistan.

Though I'm guessing the majority of the readers don't celebrate it, and aren't in places that it's an official holiday, Eid Mubarak nonetheless.

Back to the pictures theme. Slate did another retrospective centering on women in Afghanistan. There was some big Afghan-American women's conference in Kabul last week. I heard nothing of it till I read Slate's note on it. Also, there is some "Woman's Day" as part of the Eid holiday. I think that is purely regional, as I'm not familiar with such being part of the larger muslim culture or holiday. Anyone know anything about that? Also, to celebrate "Woman's Day" there are supposedly aboout 15 or so women, who recently crossed the border from Pakistan, that plan on celebrating the day by blowing themselves up in Kabul and various other places. Yeah...so go take a look at those pictures of women covered in the birdie burkas.

7 comments:

Liz said...

Great blog!
Thanks for the Eid wishes... but wasn't Columbus Day back on Oct. 9th?

quasim said...

Liz,
Thanks. I've read your blog a few times too. Have been meaning to throw up a link...is that cool?

Yeah, I guess Columbus day was a while back, but we skipped it here, so the boss just kinda threw it on there for us.

Anonymous said...

Eid Mubarak to you too

Liz said...

I've always liked Columbus Day myself (all those drawings of ships from the school days bring back warm memories for me :-)), so I guess whenever you get to celebrate with a day off is cool - although I think Halloween off would be even better!

Ya, that's cool about the link... hope you don't mind that I already listed yours on my page!

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Hi,

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Just wanna appreciate your efforts and would like to share another stuff that I found during my search on google i.e eid text greetings on http://www.smsxone.com/eid-mubarak-sms/25-1/

and lastly, EID Mubarak for the year 2008 to you too in advance:)

Cuttysark said...

Great blog! I enjoy reading your thoughts on eid! Anyway, more power to your blog and eid mubarak to you.