Idil Fitri 2014

 After a month of fasting Eid is finally here. In fact it's now more than 10 days that Ramadan has ended. The siege on Gaza is given a respite - there is a 10 day ceasefire. More bodies have been identified from the plane crash. And when I really sit and think and feel... I just feel so hopeless and helpless. I can only pray and enjoy the day. What was that Latin phrase - seize the day! Can't remember the Latin words anymore. But sometimes I feel sick of the whole world - killing and maiming children and animals. You can't really run away from images of these on the internet. FB is full of them that I no longer read them. And yet it is Eid. Eid Mubarak world! 

At home it is as usual very busy. Traditional foods must be prepared and served for guests. This year we have a very small celebration, in respect for the downed plane MH17. But my house was full of guests even then, specially in the morning of the first day. My sisters and brothers and their family all came over for the usual morning feast. This time however it was a quieter than usual affair - no noisy children running, no shouts from my brothers and no jones from my sisters. My bother in law Rahman, the husband of my beloved sister Laila, had passed away just a week before raya. It was sad but not unexpected because he had been ill for more than a year, and towards the end had had to be given morphine to stop the pain. He was a heavy smoker in his younger days and it had destroyed his lungs. I think after he retired instead of cutting down he smoked even more, mainly out of boredom. So in the end you can say that his lungs gave up on him - he developed COPD. 

The best thing about raya or Eid is that all my children came home. Rizal stayed longer than his usual 2 days and even Wan came home a day before Eid. So all 4 of them and their spouses were here in Malacca for the celebrations. We even took a family photo in the garden. 

Family photo 2014

As usual we held an open house on the first day, albeit a small one. Most of my friends and Repin's friends turned up and also the whole family - the Tahir family as well as the Ibrahim family. Then we visited my brother in law in Semabok. His open house was of course very grand. Lots of food - with the typical rendang and ketupat and lemang as well as nasi Bukhari or BukhariRice, which is a kind of pilau cooked with lamb.

Above photo - Rizal and daughter, Rania

Above photo - the guys in our family - from left to right  ( Neville, Rizal, Repin and Ridzuan)