Eid Mubarak!

#casual #candid cuz I totally hang out without my glasses on all the time

So today was (is? it's 1:20 AM, I don't know) Eid, a holiday that happens at the end of Ramadan, unclear exactly why. It was also our last official host family weekend, so I woke up there at 5:30 this morning, an hour later than everyone else. I had a borrowed dress from maybe an aunt of my language partner, that was maybe from her wedding or for a wedding. Unclear. It's in the style associated with the Salalah region, very far from here (next to ~Yemen~). People were a little confused by it, and a few thought that I might just be a really weird Omani, which I guess is an accomplishment.

My little host sister's hennaed feet. I've never seen henna done like this before, maybe it's just an Omani thing? 

Miryam, 6 am, ready to go

Top right, courtesy of Kiaya's Instagram

On Thursday, after a busy afternoon of calligraphy class, grocery shopping, chocolate chip cookie baking, and lunch at 4pm, we went to the house of our academic director for iftar and henna to prep for Eid. 

Hussein's yard at sunset

We ate a typically absurd amount of food (rice, chicken, potato curry-like thing, meat, salad, fruit salad, chickpea thing, cookies, juice, soda, fruit, muffins, more cookies, apricots, watermelon, ~leben~, water, dates) and then settled down an did henna for several hours, interrupted very briefly by the entrance of a large and surprisingly fast scorpion that was promptly dispatched with a shoe, though after causing a fair bit of emotional distress. We got henna from the women in Hussein's family, so it was less professional than sometimes, but more fun. There were 28 of us, so it took a while, and we finally left when the boys got bored I guess. I tried to henna myself, but it's harder than they make it look. Hamdulillah no one sees my legs here.

The bints all dressed up.

Bae, feat. bejeweled thing that babies chew on (what are those called tho?)

The astroturf tho. In front of the grandfather's house.

Anyway. Yesterday (I got distracted midway through this blog post, so I'm starting again after waking up at 3 pm~) was Eid. We left the house at the ungodly hour of 6 am, to go to my language partner's grandfather's house. There were probably a hundred people spread out in and around the house, all in their Eid finery. We went in and greeted people with the language partners (two of the other students and their language partner were there as well, everyone in Ibri is related) and were given money since we're young women and I guess that's a part of the holiday. After that we took ~pictures~ and then headed off to the Eiood, a place where kids (chaperoned by male relatives) go to buy gifts and snacks with the money they just received. It's in a wadi, aka the great outdoors, which I think is why it happens at 7 am. We ran into some of the guys in our program there and the Pakistani guy we befriended on the cab ride back from Muscat, which was funny. Because of the amount of men in the Eiood, the Omani women hung out on a mat by the car, but the American women went and stuck out a lot. I took a bunch of pictures but they're all on film, so that'll have to wait. 

Chewy waaaaaaaajid. Eating this in this dress felt haram. 

After the Eiood, it was back to the grandfather's house. At this point in the day, various family members set up little stands and sell snacks, a very different system from the American one, though I guess they give out a ton of money beforehand so it evens out. There was meshakik (~kebabs~), ramen, fruit salad with ice cream (~!!!~), fireworks and firecrackers, juice boxes, and French fries. Solid system imo. 

Me + habibti Miryam

Lunch feat. not Omani women

Casual house

After that we sat in a majlis (sitting room) for a while, drinking coffee and eating more fruit, and entered the purgatory stage of Eid. We sat, played with children, tried to avoid small explosives, sat some more, Instagrammed, and sat. After a while we switched houses to an uncle's house that was next door because we ran out of space. We watched almost all of Brave, and then watched almost all of it again because everyone was too lazy to get up and turn it off. There were probably 20 girls in the room, all trying to sleep in a rather Tetris-esque manner. After a few hours there we switched to another room because some of the men wanted to watch soccer. Typical. In this room I was out of reach of the air conditioner, and napping in a twin bed with someone else in a room with 20 other people and no air conditioner is another kind of hell. But I managed. We woke up for lunch (rice and lamb) and then went back to sleep. Some of the girls asked for water, but we were told that there wasn't any. Back to sleep. We got up at 5:30 or so, and lurked some more. We went on an excursion with some of the kids to try to find more ice cream but failed. I confused a housekeeper a lot, because she was pretty sure I was Indian and just hiding it. 

Half-hearted photo shoot. I couldn't handle the velvet allll day (Me, Citlali, and Asma)

So many habibtis~~

We sat around while the Omani women took pictures in their dresses for two hours. They all buy new dresses for Eid, some tradiotnal Omani, some Moroccan-style caftans, some 18th century European looks. They put on a boatload of make-up and let down their hairs to take selfies sans hijab to Whatsapp to each other. It's fun, but I have a somewhat shorter tolerance for selfie taking. We took a few sort of half-hearted photos and then sprawled out on the floor under the AC. 

We were getting tired, but ~pizza~

It was decided that we would be getting pizza for dinner, to be eaten in the park. The process was strikingly similar to 15 American 20-somethings trying to get organized and figure out $$$ and whatnot, basically v exasperating. But we managed, and piled into a car driven by someone's brother or something. 14 of us piled into said car. Bints in front, bints in the trunk, etc. Ate pizza, bought more ice cream (oops), and then headed back to the house to get stuff and go back to the apartment for blissful glorious sleep. Sleep is great.

If you know me, you know that me+children isn''t a natural combination, but Hagar's great.

Vaguely Middle Eastern News Compilation Contemplation 6/30

Speaking of writing things about the Middle East, a paper of mine was selected for the Middle East Studies Association Undergraduate Research Workshop in Denver this November, so inshallah I can find a way to get funding to actually go! I've been researching Tunisian women's political involvement in the context of the Arab Spring, and will hopefully have the opportunity to clean up and revise what I've done so far.

In other news, there's a lot happening in the world, as per usual. I enjoyed this article by the Washington Post because of its graphics and humanizing of Syrian refugees, though the user interface is sort of annoying, and I feel like they could have included a little more detail and research. It stuck out to me because I followed a very similar route over winter break, when I traveled from Austria to Turkey by land. Reading this article reminded me of the privileges that I have, an American passport and a little disposable income sent me to the same places that these people went through, but I have the luxury of doing it for fun. It also reminds me that I got my passport very thoroughly checked on a train between Hungary and Austria, which normally doesn't happen because it's all Schengen - I wondered about it at the time, and I still do. Maybe they thought I was an illegal immigrant or asylum seeker too... It wouldn't be the first time. 

It has also been a sad week, with a fair few terrorist attacks all over the world. I don't even know if people in the U.S. read about these, so here's a link if you hadn't. The New York Times headlines online right now are all about gay pride and parades and marriage. I'm happy that the Supreme Court made the correct decision, but I don't think marriage is quite as important as dozens of people dying. As a side note, it was a little uncomfortable to read about gunmen killing foreigners at a beach resort before heading off to go be a tourist at a beach resort here. 

Finally, a side note related to the above but also not. Just FYI.