"I do not pay much for Eid clothes, so often we will not buy new clothes this Eid except for our little child, perhaps, but we will definitely dress up. We will contact all the family and laugh and talk as if we did not part and never miss, then we will eat Eid cakes and drink coffee all day long as we used to do every Eid back home ".
This is what the Jordanian Ayat Hawawsheh, who lives in the Turkish capital, Ankara, said, and it is the case for the Arabs when they leave their homelands.
Arabs in Turkey of all nationalities are trying hard to create a spirit of celebrating Eid al-Fitr, in which they invoke memories from childhood and into their youth, trying to pass them on to their children in their young families, whether they come to Turkey with the aim of studying, working, or escaping from war zones in their countries.
Ayat Hawawsheh and her husband Mohamed Al-Mansi - with their child Kinan - maintain the Eid rituals that have grown up with them since childhood (Al Jazeera)
The responsibility to revive joy
Ayat Hawawsheh considers that caring for the manifestations of joy is a responsibility that falls on her in the first place, "as a mother and wife, I feel that I am the first person responsible for controlling the caliber of joy in my small family, and the Eid is of course a joy, the joy that we have completed the obligatory duty and the joy of our fasting and our reward, just as Eid has rituals of joy that grew up with us since childhood .
She cooperates with her husband Muhammad in the preparations and says, "Last Eid, my husband and I made Eid cakes as much as we could collect from the supplies, and it was delicious with the taste of our childhood and our memories at home, except that it lacked Arabic coffee, and fortunately my family sent me this year some Arabic coffee that I keep." Out for the feast day. "
Ayat longs for the feast and memories of the family feast. She says, "There are missing items in the joy of Eid and the rituals of joy that we cannot revive here, including the big family gathering, the sweet noise and the screaming of children, even the annoying fireworks that children love on Eid."
Iman: The most beautiful thing in which we console ourselves is to revive the scent of the country in our homes, from the smell of cakes emanating from the oven (Al Jazeera)
Fragrance of Palestine fills Istanbul
Palestinian Iman Mustafa, who has lived in Istanbul for 6 years, sees that the more years of alienation increase, the nostalgia for the homeland increases and the search for it increases in the simplest details. Then it ignites in us the longing for those moments that brought us together with our people in our country during those nights, as we shared their preparation, and our council pulsed with stories and laughter that illuminated the corners of the houses. "
Eman is keen to remind her children of Eid stories back home, and is keen to bring Eid cakes from Gaza and exchange it with her Turkish and Arab neighbors.
Iman's hobby in Palestinian embroidery is complemented by a delightful atmosphere by listening to the songs of the Palestinian heritage on Eid (Al-Jazeera)
And the belief in the joyful atmosphere of the Eid was reinforced by listening to the songs of the Palestinian heritage in their home, and wearing the Palestinian dress, and saying, "What I care most about, especially on special occasions, is to wear the Palestinian dress with its beauty and splendor, and the most happy feeling when I found my daughters' love and their eagerness to wear the Palestinian dress on special occasions on the Cultural Day." In their schools. "
Iman expresses her longing for Eid at home by investing her time in "that Palestinian stitch that I learned from my childhood in the art of Palestinian embroidery, so I translate this longing as regular stitches of love and nostalgia."
Ali Al-Allaw: I have the scent of dates for the feast, or as we call it in Iraq (kleija) (Al-Jazeera)
Iraqi Kalija
"Eid has the smell of date maamoul, or as we in Iraq call it (kleija), as it is like a military census in the camp when the time for Eid is, so everyone prepares and enlists the young before the old to cooperate in preparing them to be in the best taste," says Iraqi Ali Al-Alaw.
Ali Allaw: We, as Arabs in the diaspora, are keen to renew customs and traditions at every opportunity for celebration or events (Al-Jazeera)
As a child, Allaw remembers how his grandfather used to distribute Eid al-Fitr to the children after the Eid prayer.
As for Eid clothes, they have a special tradition in Iraq, as he shows, “My father and my uncles, as well as my grandfather, used to wear the Arab dress (dishdasha) with ghutra and iqal. As for the children, they wear the Arabic clothes and (the two) or what is called the (taqiya), which is often made of strings. Hand knitted cotton. "
Allaw misses these details in the country of expatriation, as he says, however, "we, as Arabs in the diaspora, are keen to renew these customs and traditions at every opportunity for celebration or special occasions."
Eid sweets supplies, weather that the Arabs carried with them to Turkey (Al-Jazeera)
Eid in the life of "Al-Azabi"
Hassan al-Wardi is a single Syrian young man who is upset about spending the days of Eid alone without his family, as he says, especially in the first two years he spent in Turkey. Eid is a "normal day that we spend in the café with my single friends, and the Eid rituals and joy disappear in the details of our day."
But after the arrival of members of his family to settle in Turkey, the Eid seemed different in al-Wardi's life, and I again accepted rituals such as meeting with the family and visits, and caring for his nephews and sisters to visit the amusement park and play with them. He eats it in his city, Al-Bukamal, and adds, "In my city, Eid had a different taste ... We used to spend the Eid at the house of the grandfather from the father and the mother and visit wombs throughout the extended family."
Eid maamoul (bracelets) at Iman's house (Al Jazeera)
Eid between the Arabs and the Turks
On the other hand, the Syrian woman, Fida Othman, who has lived in Turkey for 30 years, approaches the similarities and differences between the Eid in Turkey and among the Arabs in general, which she finds are very similar, with slight differences.
The Turks depend on the presence of maamoul in the Eid sweets, but they have all its varieties of baklava, which is an essential part of the Eid sweets.
Also, one of the rituals of the Turks on Eid is the ties of kinship, but the duration of their visits is long for the Arabs, whose duration is shorter so that families can greet the largest number of families during the days of the holiday.
Fida Osman is what she makes most happy about when visiting her Turkish neighbors, their legacy of spraying cologne water on the hand (Al-Jazeera)
The Turks are interested in visiting the graves of relatives on the first day of the Eid after prayer, and this custom also they share with the Arabs, but they differ with them in allocating Eid prayers mainly to men, while the Arab family is interested in going to the Eid prayer with children and women in large numbers, as Fida says.
Since her childhood, Fida has been visiting Turks and what she is most pleased with when they visit their heritage is by spraying cologne water on the hand, and until now she is keen to visit her Turkish neighbors, accompanied by her children and Arab neighbors of many nationalities.