By Bassam Tariq
You have traveled 13,000 miles around America in 29 days all while fasting and blogging everyday. And today, the 30th day of your journey, the celebration, you are late to the mosque. In fact, you are so late that the traffic jam in the parking lot has already passed. You enter the mosque in hopes of catching the last sentiments of Ramadan and grand embraces that happen after prayer, but that too has passed. You are directed to go towards the gymnasium where a large number of the congregants are eating samosas and drinking chai. You run towards the gymnasium in hopes to maybe at least get some photos of happy people. You enter the large space and see everyone leaving and wonder, “how am I going to make this work?”
Go ahead, you know you want to say it, this sucks. Especially since you have come to Detroit on one of the most important holidays, away from your family and friends, to celebrate Eid with strangers.
But then there is that part of you that shrugs it off and starts snapping whatever you see. You take mindless photos, photos of people taking photos, photos of people praying Friday prayers, boys choking other boys, uncles playing ping pong and an Obama-themed gas station. Happy moments, non-sensical ones, but mostly things that don’t add up to a cohesive narrative and for the first time during this entire adventure you don’t care.
Today is Eid and we are celebrating it wherever and however we can. Let’s leave making sense for later.
Eid Mubarak everyone.
Elderly Pakistani man who knew how to “kick ass and take names when it comes to Ping-Pong.”
