Celebrating Eid in south-western Sydney

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In south-western Sydney where a large number of Bangladeshis live, Ramadan was observed and Eid celebrated with the usual fanfare. At Lakemba, the Bangla -town of Sydney, Iftar was prepared by the Bangladeshis and sold on the streets, attracting all food lovers.

here was confusion over fixing the Eid date. Finally, a greater section of the Bangladeshis observed Eid last Saturday after a proper moon-sighting. That made sense.

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When my son Komol and I went for Eid prayers, it was a shivering cold Saturday morning, but a shining sunny morning too. We had our Eid prayers in an Islamic school basement, which almost spilled with Bangladeshi Muslims from our locality. The Imam was from South Africa. He conducted the prayer with twelve Taqbeers. We are getting used to this. After the prayer, we were treated to sweet and crunchy jelabies which I relished.

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After the prayers, we visited relatives in the area and then entertained guests at home. My daughter-in-law, Tasmia, had quite a number of friends and their families over to visit us. She prepared a wide range of food in our very traditional way. Our next door neighbour, the Wal Glynn couple, visited us and shared our joy. Tasmia even made delicious cheese and blueberry cakes.

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The visiting continued till night. We didn’t have a chance to visit our Bangladeshi neighbour living on the other side of the wall. It shouldn’t have been like that, but that's reality. Anyway, I am pretty sure they celebrated Eid with their friends and relatives like we did.  I overate, as at every visit there was some special food to tempt the taste buds. Everywhere we went, the on-going FIFA World Cup added a bit of extra fun to Eid celebrations.