Eid preparations

The Eid, or post-Ramadan celebration, holidays are here and we should be celebrating Eid either on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on our national moon-sighting committee’s decision. Since Pakistan is the only place one to two days behind in the Islamic calender (it’s either the 30th Ramadan or Eid today in the rest of the world), I would guess Tuesday will be the day. You would imagine that sighting the moon wouldn’t be an issue in these times, but apparantly it is enough to cause three different dates for the same calender.

Most of my Sunday was spent shopping for Eid. It is nice when you do this in Islamabad (yes, the traffic is worse than ever, but it’s still manageable), whereas Pindi is simply hell. I was stuck in traffic this morning and realized quite a while later that some clowns in front had just parked their cars there on the road (it was empty in front of them) and everyone behind them thought they were stuck too. In Islamabad, the traffic police takes care of any such wrongly parked cars.

Still, the crowds that are out shopping, eating or just enjoying themselves are bigger than any I’ve seen here. People seem to have more money to spend and there are more and better places ready to deprive them of it. My main concern is that things may seem hunky dorie in the capital, but the rest of the country is still in a miserable state. Some of my friends argue that the rich getting richer will raise the quality of life for everyone, but that’s still questionable. I just hope that there are less people below the poverty line today than ever before.