In the dark hour before dawn, Soraya Naame joined a throng of Muslims visiting Martyrs' Cemetery, clutching bundles of myrtle branches and palm fronds as tall as she is.
Naame, 44, was marking the first day of Eid al-Fitr, one of the biggest celebrations of the Muslim calendar at the end of the month of Ramadan.
Modernity has swept over and changed some of the holiday's rituals - introducing a last-minute shopping rush that recalls the Christmas retail season in the US - but it has not altered the holiday's core, on display at sunrise in this necropolis.
PHOTO: AP
"The dead are expecting their families at this hour," Naame said, seated with two sisters on the edge of their father's burial place. The sisters were smoking, reading the Koran and chatting, settled as if in their own living room for an hour's visit beside the grave.
The three women had already fashioned an arch over the grave out of braided palm fronds, and they had planted bunches of myrtle branches in the grave itself.
"It eases the suffering of the dead," Naame said, citing a tradition of decorating graves with flora that dates to the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
Eid al-Fitr brings to a climax a month of Ramadan rituals intended to draw Muslims closer to their families and to God. The observance, which lasts three days, is the first time in a month that observant Muslims are allowed to consume food during daylight hours. By tradition, it is also a day when relatives gather and feast together.
"Today we'll eat every meal together as a family, breakfast, lunch and dinner," said Bilal Yassin, 27, a jeweler who was clowning with his sister and neighbor at the grave of his grandfather, who died in 1998. "This is a blessed, happy day."
Eid begins the day after the new moon is spotted at the end of Ramadan, so the date varies from country to country and sect to sect, depending on which astronomers are followed. This year in Lebanon, Sunni and most Shiite Muslims observed the beginning of Eid on Friday morning. Shiite clerical authorities had announced the date at the beginning of the week, but Sunni Muslims did not learn until after sunset on Thursday, when their highest clerical authority in Lebanon, the Dar al-Fatwa, issued an announcement, that their holiday would begin the following morning.
Within moments of the announcement, a cacophony of fireworks as loud as gunfire broke out in the city center, and traffic jams clogged shopping streets festooned with strings of Ramadan lights and signs advertising sales. Families stocked up on special Eid pastries called maamoul, crusty pockets filled with candied nuts or date paste.
When he was a child, Samir Zaatiti, 50, said, Eid simply afforded a chance for families to eat together, give the children spending money and send them off for a treat like a movie.
Now, he said with a sigh, "it has become more like your Christmas." He and his wife were loading maamoul into boxes at a crowded pastry shop on Barbour Street late Thursday night, rushing to prepare for the hordes of visitors they expected on Friday.
Parents are expected to buy new clothes for their children as an Eid gift and embark on a ritualistic round of visits beginning with immediate family and culminating with distant relatives.
"We celebrate with all the Muslims of the world, and with our family," Zaatiti said. But he added that he does not like the new twists to the holiday, like the excursions parents are supposed to organize for their families on the second and third days of the festival.
After the end of Eid, the festive trappings of Ramadan will come down: the green and white strings of lights on the mosque minarets, the garlanded arches over the major shopping streets, the larger-than-life dioramas portraying virtues like justice and charity at major intersections.
Late last Thursday, Imad Abou Moussa, 40, smoked a water pipe outside his infant clothing store, Baby Dream, waiting for the last burst of Eid shoppers. The retail season was weak this year, and he blamed Lebanon's political crisis for leaving people with less money to spend.
But he said he enjoyed Ramadan, fasting every day and giving the required alms to the poor. And on Eid, after a morning at the cemetery and an afternoon with his family, Abou Moussa planned to celebrate by carousing a little with his friends.
"Tomorrow, God willing, I'll have my first drink in a month," he said, rolling the smoke from his water pipe in his mouth.
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