The Inconstant Moon

By anyone's reckoning we've had a great evening, cruising around town in a car with good suspension and speakers, in the groove with some nice Bombay beats, eating ice-cream. Then this: "There's no murder here."
My friends are terribly disappointed. It was bad enough the other shop being out of Dairy Milk on Eid of all days, but no murder, now that's bad. Rose shrugs her shoulders and sweeps her shawl round her in a defiant gesture that makes it clear she's done with that DVD shop, like big time. That's it. No murder; you've lost my custom. Honey.
Our driver is a dashing young fellow for whom pleasure and work happily meet if, as I assume, fast cars, pretty girls and good music are his bag. But even he slows his pace to match the mood.

I'm never too sure what's being celebrated at this Eid. All that's ever mentioned is food (green custard featured large this year) and family (which is reason enough for me) but I know what a lot of lads with cars are celebrating: Independence.
Not from the British as such, that's in August, but from the stern laws of one Sir Isaac Newton, particularly that pesky number 3, threatening an equal and opposite reaction to every action. But there'll be no collisions here, we're free of all that! So let's drive towards each other really really fast so we get bigger and bigger and the horn will crescendo. Let's swerve this a-way and that a-way. Let's have a race. Acceleration? Yes please! Constant velocity? Boring! Let's swing our partners round and round, once to the left and then to the right. Dosy-doe!
Since no one seems too concerned about the punishments for breaking these laws, I can only assume they don't apply in this part of the world.
The street is a party.

***************************

These are the things that cease to be pleasant in times of uncertainty.

1. toy guns
2. deserted streets
3. men breaking into a run in public places
4. bonfires
5. fireworks

The evening before, as darkness fell, someone with good eyesight saw the first curve of light in the sky that reminds us that after a dark night, life goes on, although with more regular meals to sustain it this month. This is another reason to celebrate.
I had been invited to welcome in Eid with my headmistress, a woman of great poise. At first, this consisted of hearing her phone far-flung nieces and nephews to wish them a blessed day in four or five different languages. There seems to be some doubt every Eid whether we do, in fact, all share one sky, one moon. "How much of your moon can you see?" people ask.
"Is the moon out where you are?"
"Yes, yes, I see it, it's here - is it there?"
O, it's a capricious world.

Tea was served with hot samosas. As with everything she does or makes, they were of impeccable quality.
All of a sudden, we heard explosions. We both put our cups of tea down with a shudder.
"Fireworks," she said after a moment, managing a nervous smile. "It's Eid, it'll be fireworks," arguing away her doubts.
We regained our equilibrium with the help of tea.

As headmistress, it is her job to pronounce bans on the 'vices of the day'; three before 9:00 is not uncommon: "Children, no dirty fingernails, we'll cut them off; no home language, we are English-medium; no Dodge Ball, not everyone can dodge."
There's another thing that has to be banned and rebanned: bazaari food. Like cigarettes in other climes it comes with a health warning and it's simply not seemly. Good families eat wholesome homemade food. Bazaari food is for those that play fast and loose, those that do a bit of duckin' and a-divin', dodgin' and a-weavin'. That driver, for example, now he would be a bazaari food type. Don't tell anyone but I'm quite partial to a bit of street food myself: liver kebabs, spring-roll surprises and gol-guppe, that comedy element in a person's diet, due to it's amusing flavour and mode of consumption. It should not be found in the lunch boxes of any child.

But I have never heard her ban anything with the vehemence with which she said that night, 'Fireworks should be banned.'

So should bombs, so should guns.

We're sitting round the telly watching the news a week later wishing it was only fireworks. We wish murder was only on the movie channel. But games have exploded into destruction round the country and no one knows the death toll yet. These bombs are worse than the moon; you never know when they'll appear. We're glad the smoke we smell is only someone burning the first of the autumn leaves.

For it is nearly autumn and I have been here a year. The crops I saw being harvested when I first arrived are ripe again. I've had the freshly-prepared festival food whose stale left-overs I tasted in the first week of October last year.

The moon is waxing.
There's a lot you can depend on, yesterday and today and forever.

Feasting, Fasting

My chaperone is ten. He's a boy though, so he'll keep me safe. 'Baji', he asks me as we pass our goat friends and pause to rub their foreheads with our knuckles to their consternation, 'Do you like goats?'
'Let me count the ways,' I began, but faltered. How, I wondered, do I render into Urdu 'cheeky-chap grin'; 'their all-knowing wisdom and frabjous joy'; 'the bolshie head-butting stance that turns to timidity on one's approach'? But reader, know this, that I love them.
'That's good baji, because that's what we're having for tea.'

They live at the back of a school-house. They sleep on the desks and by day, stay in the father's workplace, his tailor's shop. The only furniture is the sewing machine stand. The smell of goat stew blunts my sentiment. I am now hungry and heartless.
Everyone is expectant as the floor-cloth is spread and wiped down with tailor's scraps of georgette. A basin is brought in, we wash our hands. Rotis are thrown down, frisbee-style, and curry is ladled out. Everything changes when I get my plate. It's less of a meal than a biology lesson. Anatomy is on the menu, and such long, tubular organs smelling like, well, smelling like that can only be intestinal. I compliment the pickle.
At the end of the meal, when the children are outside, the mother whispers, 'He's only ten, he doesn't know how to buy meat yet.'
It is my professional opinion that no child, whether boy or girl, should be responsible for meat and poultry purchasing until they have been taught and tested on that diagram in the bio. textbook.

The father sets his alarm for four a.m. as tomorrow is Ramadan: Day 1. It's thoughtful of him, as he'll not hear it ringing himself, he's deaf. So he doesn't hear it ringing now, piercingly, until he turns and sees his children, wife and guest all covering their ears.
Actually, no one needs an alarm clock to wake for the pre-dawn breakfast. After an incident many years ago, when a man repeatedly beat his two wives for only waking at dawn, too late to whip up a smorgasbord, someone commissioned a sort of extra muezzin to make a call not to prayer but to breakfast. So at 3:30 I awake as electricity surges and a tannoy tells us to all get up, and eat food. 'EAT FOOD,' it said, again and again, 'EAT FOOD'. Then, an hour later, 'Right, stop eating now.' Yessir.

Silence, and then the first light is accompanied by more profound thoughts suddenly filling the sky, each man's voice from every mosque weaving together into a polyphony. Morning has broken, the fasting has begun.

Later, evening falls and the fasting is broken. Hunger makes the azan ring out louder. It is somehow more substantial, like food itself. I'm going down the lane after darkness has fallen and it is, of course, a moonless night. A rich panel of star-studded sky gleams so ostentatiously that if it were a woman's scarf, we'd all gossip about how showy it was. 'Who would use so many jewels? Such a shocking show of extravagance, don't you think? Are there no limits?'
No. Not for this designer, it would appear. He's into 'lavish'.

However, I am flanked by darkness unrelieved. For a moment I wonder where the stars went to the right and to the left of me. Then I remember that there is more overhead than sky: the firmament here comprises terra firma almost as high. Whole swathes of the universe are blocked from view because of it.

Between these two hills is my town. I make my way to my neighbours'. These are the folk who bake bread, make fresh noodles and lightly spice home-grown greens. Nigel Slater and his co-religionists would love these foodies. They feed me clotted cream and marmalade on naan, bring me steel tumblers of lassi, share rice with me off big platters. But it's more than wholesome. The kids can crack walnuts in their fists. Sparks fly in the kitchen and not just the linguistic sparkle of hot-headed TV chefs, either. While the children fiddle with the hot-plate wires, it's fireworks.
Most celebratory of all though, is the invitation to take-off my headscarf, hold it wide open and feel it grow heavy with fruit raining down as children dance in the orchard branches. My scarves haven't yet broken, but it's a distinct possibility.

Tonight, though, it's offal curry. I get two kidneys and an intestine.

There can be great joy in fasting.