Whatcha doin' during Eid?

Sabiwabi over at Oy Habibti was asking just how we all spend our Eid.

Well, here's what we do.

Night before we get all our stuff ready (new clothes), and I go mad crazy with baking (I'll tell you why in a min.). Since everyone is so excited that Eid is the next day, a lot of people just don't sleep. Women go get henna / hair / waxing done. Men go to the barber and get their beards tidied up or shaved and then have a haircut. Then, the barber cracks their necks. Seriously. I just witnessed that the other day when walking along a sidewalk with the hub and I just gave him the look. His response? “No, L. I don’t let the barber do that to me.” What the heck? I never knew barbers were qualified as chiropractors. Apparently, I have a lot to learn still here.

Back to Eid.

First morning men go to Eid prayer, women stay home and bling bling it up. And the little girls bling bling it up too with their mama's help. Bakhour is heavily burnt in the house and put under dresses so you smell like heaven. Then, you head to the 'family' house and eat a traditional dish called arsee'a. Think mashed potato consistency mushed rice with chicken or lamb mixed in to it. You dip it into butter and a sauce made from raisins or dates. It's a carb-addict's dream. Personally, a mouthful of the stuff makes my eyes roll into the back of my head and I just fall over backwards into the Arabic style on the floor couch while all the women fan me until I regain consciousness. It’s that good! Then, we have freshly made hot tea with milk (thank god – I need caffeine to wake me up) and the kids go around to people for their 'eidiya (money). From there, it's visit, visit, visit. At each visit food is served. Usually meat, fruits, sweets, strong Arabic coffee. This is given at every house so you have to be smart and just eat a bite or two (if the hostess will let you – I sort of like the part where she says, “Why L – you haven’t eaten a thing!” as my mouth is stuffed full of meat and she loads my plate up with more. But we won’t tell anyone my little secret because it’s not so lady-like. Ahem.). Then it's lunch time and we eat probably the most delicious biryani you can ever imagine. A side dish of some African chili that’s been blended into a pulp is so hot my nose drips and my eyes water is served, but man is it good! From there, we head back home and people start visiting us and I stuff them full of cakes, cookies and whatnots. They dig American style desserts.

Then it's nap time, we all rest and take double the amount of tums.

Wake up. Get bling blinged again and take kids out to spend their eidiya money. Return back home, drop kids off to play with whatever they bought and go bling bling it up again. This time it's the adult's turn to have a little fun and we usually go out to a reserved hotel restaurant that has totally overrated food, but at this point it doesn’t matter since I’m so bloated I can finally act ladylike in public.

The following three days go like this. We are invited to lunch every day. One day we eat a meat dish called taqali (That I would like to just clamp my nose shut with a clothespin as I eat it because I don’t like it. It’s made with lamb and liver. I’m always given the biggest spoonful of the dish, and 97% of it is liver. I don’t do organs.). On that day, an entire lamb or goat is marinated and put into a pit to be roasted for 24 hours. Oh goody, goody, goody! I love shuwa and I’ll try to take pictures of the process and the meat for you all. Ok, so the next day we eat the shuwa with rice, salad and yogurt. I am salivating now so excuse the drool. The last day is bbq day and you guessed it. We bbq meat. Usually kabobs.

I usually am quite uptight during the holidays and I dunno. This year I’m feeling quite relaxed about the whole thing and I’m going to go into from a different angle. That would be the ‘Chill out, L” angle.

That, my friends is how Eid is spent in L_Oman’s little world and the $1120 spent on clothes for that first day is just dust in the wind...