On Saturday evening, Kenza Forty and her two enthusiastic children floated around a decorative Ramadan calendar they placed at their Brooklyn home about a month ago.
“Yaah, let's turn that around,” Forty said. Together, they flipped it over and revealed the other side: “Eid Mubarak. The family of the Mohierdin Forty tribe.” The sun has just set, and a crescent moon has been discovered and confirmed: Eid al-Fitr, the end-end holiday of the holy month of Muslim fasting, will be on Sunday.
Decorating a home during Ramadan and Eid is a relatively new tradition adopted by Fourati, a model and co-founder of a brand called OSAY. As her children are getting older, they have asked more questions about their faith.
In Tunis, where Forty, 39, grew up with a large family, Ramadan celebrations were all around her. On the eve of Eid, she recalled running around the streets surrounding the house with her friends, as fireworks lit up the sky.
“This is how I grew up and I want them to get a glimpse into how we grew up,” said Forty, who has created a fun way for children to explore being Muslims.
She then pulls away the children who were wrestling with each other and leads them into the bedroom upstairs to show off their new clothes for the morning Eid prayer they planned to attend Washington Square Park. For the six-year-old Idris, Forty introduced the white Jeva, a traditional Tunisian robe, and the red Chekia, a nasty cylindrical hat. She had some Dora's choices. 8 – One of the decorated purple jeva and gold belts and black Palestinian toves. Dora jumped up and down, exclaiming that she liked the purple dress. “It's shiny and has more gems.”
After a spiritual and disciplined month of fasting, Eid al-Fitr is a fun holiday for Muslims. They show off their new outfits, take part in festivals, eat special invasion dishes and sweets, and visit friends and relatives. However, this is not possible even if there is no mother from a household who will make the magic happen the day before.
In New York, where around 800,000 Muslims live, many mothers create new preparatory rituals with their families, and have been holding the old ones since childhood.
Growing up on a Bangladeshi island known as Sandwip in the 1980s, Mahimabegum and her five brothers rushed to the local mela, or festival, on the morning of Eid, when they bought colorful bangles and Bengali sweets. When they returned home, they were greeted with an east feast prepared by their mother, who had been awake all night to prepare it.
“We didn't do anything,” Begum said. “My mother does everything.”
Begum has since inherited responsibility. Each year she puts together an impressive Eid spread for around 40 relatives who visit her home in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. The preparation process is no joke.
“First, I think about what my kids like,” said Begum, 49. “That type of food I'm making.”
Begum began cooking at 4am the day before Eid. She made dishes like beef biryani and goat korma, and made her signature dishes, chicken jal fries, masala fried chicken dyed in sweet and spicy sauce. She came up with a recipe when her daughter Chompa Kabir was 2 years old (she tracks the time by the age of her child, not by year.) She has since cooked all Eid.
Kabir, 29, the creator of food content who has become interested in cooking after observing her mother in the kitchen, helps with the ways she can do it, especially when she's older. What she has been offering for the past few years has been a dessert she calls Rasmalai Cake. It is a creation of diasporics. A sponge cake covered with almond skin, similar to TresLeches, topped with masala-infused milk with light whipped cream.
“I want her to feel grateful,” Kabir said. “She does this my life, so I want her to see and understand that what she is doing is very admirable.”
In the Bronx's Hybridge section, Ramatoureidalo gained much help from his two daughters and stepdaughter-in-law, preparing the Eid spread. The star was Thiebou Yapp, a Senegalese dish with one pot rice and beef.
Just before 1am, Diallo, a 52-year-old nurse, transferred her marinated beef into a very large pot and occupied two burners with the stove. She then turned her attention to Yassa, a Bamichelli dish made with onion sauce, and gave her daughter's instructions in Fulani, bringing water into the pot.
“We don't measure, we just cook,” Diallo said.
Her daughters then left the kitchen and set up a dining table with new tablecloths they had purchased on their trip to Morocco. They also changed the bed sheets and cleaned the curtains. This is a practice that Diallo carried with him from his mother at Ties in Senegal.
“There's a myth that Eid should clean everything,” said Diallo, who moved to New York in 2006 with her family.
“I'll try to take their holidays seriously,” Diallo added of her daughter. “It's not easy to be here. Many people become westernized and forget their culture.”
Her efforts were fruitful. Her eldest son, 28, Safiatou Diallo, said her favorite part about Eid is choosing the fabric and style of traditional Fulani costumes and making it by tailors. “I sometimes fantasize about going back to Africa and just wearing African clothes every day,” she said.
Yelda Ali has thought a lot about how to soak her 15-month-old daughter Iman in her culture. Ali, 39, the daughter of an Afghan refugee, grew up celebrating holiday house hopping in Edmonton, Alberta. But for most of her 16 years in New York, she had no bouncing home. (Her family remains in Canada.) Now she has become a mother, so she cultivated her own home with her husband, Anthony Meziah, and filled it with recreated traditions.
Ali, a DJ in Brooklyn's Bedford Stuyvesant area, said: “We still have the privileges of our language. We still have the privileges of recipes, songs, and music. For me, cultural preservation is our existence. This is our existence, and if we continue to maintain this kind of thing in our community and we do not intentionally pass on things, they will die.
However, the diaspora also has a large number of births and regeneration.
All Eid, Ali, 39, are planning to pick up new recipes that have been handed down to the motherly side. This year, the recipe was Afghan pasta, cooked ground beef and topped with yogurt and dried mint.
Mezia, a Dominican, hopes to like to learn how to cook Afghanistan cuisine. He was in the kitchen fried onion for a dish, but Ali was steaming an Eid dress of Iman's flower in the room next door. Ali had begun playing lively Afghan folk music, hyping the Iman who was dancing in Falsi.
Eid's plan was to set up a mela, or picnic, at Herbert Fong King Park, along with Afghan pasta and traditional sweets. Melas is very common in the Afghan community and is usually very large, but here in New York, Ali has her own mini mela along with her new family.
“It's about quality,” Ali said, “It's not quantity, right?”
