Thousands of Afghans had piled into buses and set out down the nation’s once-perilous highways sure for kin that they had not seen in years. Afghanistan’s solely nationwide park was full of vacationers who had solely dreamed of touring to its intensely blue lakes and jagged mountains when preventing raged throughout the nation.
And Zulhijjah Mirzadah, a mom of 5, packed a small picnic of dried fruit, gathered her household in a minibus and wove for 2 hours via the congested streets of the capital, Kabul, to a bustling amusement park.
From the doorway, she may hear the low whoosh of a curler coaster and the refrain of joyous screams from Afghans inside celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the vacation marking the tip of the holy month of Ramadan. But she couldn’t go additional. Women, she was instructed on the gate, had been barred by the Taliban from coming into the park on Eid.
“We’re facing economic problems; things are expensive; we can’t find work; our daughters can’t go to school — but we hoped to have a picnic in the park today,” mentioned Mirzadah, 25.
As Afghans endured the fixed and random violence of the final 20 years of warfare, many held hopes that when peace lastly got here to the nation, Eid al-Fitr can be its high-water mark, a day when households lengthy separated by preventing would lastly be capable of rejoice collectively.
Now that warfare is over. People can journey freely down highways devoid of gunfire, roadside bombs and makes an attempt at extortion. The terrifying drone of warplanes overhead is lengthy gone. But for a lot of, the vacation that started final Sunday in Afghanistan served as a reminder of the dissonance between the promise of peace many Afghans had imagined and the realities of the tip of the warfare.
A crippling financial disaster that has slashed incomes and despatched the costs of primary items hovering compelled many households to forgo for the primary time the Eid traditions of recent garments or dried fruit. Mosques had been emptier than traditional after a current string of explosions stoked fears of the return of terrorist assaults.
And many ladies in city areas, who’ve been devastated by the Taliban authorities’s restrictions, discovered little motive to rejoice. On Saturday, the Taliban decreed that Afghan girls should cowl themselves from head to toe, increasing a collection of onerous restrictions on girls that dictate almost each side of public life.
“To be honest, we don’t have Eid this year,” mentioned Mirzadah, who had spent the afternoon along with her household sitting throughout the road from the park on a slim strip of grass.
Most individuals in Kabul discovered that the Taliban had introduced the beginning of the vacation after a roar of celebratory gunfire thundered throughout the town the night time of April 30. Afghanistan was the primary Muslim nation to formally declare a sighting of a full crescent moon, kicking off the beginning of the vacation.
The following morning, tons of of males with prayer rugs tucked below their arms filed into the Sher Shah Suri Mosque, a big Sunni mosque within the west of Kabul. Across the courtyard, they laid out the rugs within the shade of twisted tree branches whereas armed Taliban intelligence brokers clad in camouflage pants and bulletproof vests patrolled the mosque’s grounds for threats — a stark reminder of the specter of violence that persists regardless of the tip of 20 years of warfare.
In the 2 weeks main as much as the beginning of Eid this 12 months, a bloody spat of terrorist assaults on mosques, colleges and public gatherings killed at the very least 100 individuals, principally Afghan Shiites, and stirred fears that the massive prayers on the primary day of Eid can be the subsequent goal.
At the Seyyed Abad Mosque, the most important Shiite mosque within the metropolis of Kunduz within the nation’s north, solely round 50 worshipers arrived for prayers May 1 — in contrast with 400 to 500 individuals in earlier years, attendees mentioned. Many individuals, afraid of one other blast, steered away from the mosque altogether. But lots of those that attended had been motivated by a special worry: disobeying the Taliban authorities’s declaration that Eid started May 1.
Many Afghan Shiites solid doubt over the date — a day earlier than Saudi Arabia and two days earlier than Iran, a Shiite theocracy. But anxious about repercussions from the Taliban — which have employed police-state techniques to take care of order since seizing energy — many attended Eid prayers Sunday, at the same time as they continued their daylong Ramadan quick and avoided celebrating of their houses.
“The Taliban did not threaten us that we must pray, but as soon as they came and told us that Eid prayers would begin on Sunday, and that they would come to provide security at the mosque, no one dared to tell them that we did not believe Eid had begun,” mentioned Mansoor, 33, a resident of Kunduz who most well-liked to make use of solely his first title for worry of repercussions.
But for Taliban troopers and law enforcement officials, the vacation supplied a second of on the wrestle that introduced them again to energy and the lives they reflection have established for themselves since.
In the car parking zone of 1 police station in Kabul, a gaggle of Taliban policemen arrived in a darkish inexperienced pickup truck, weapons slung over their shoulder. Handcuffs dangled off the wrist of 1 police officer like a big bracelet, whereas one other held to his nostril a pink flower plucked from a median within the street.
Mohibullah Mushfiq, 26, had spent each Eid in mountainsides and dusty villages away from his kin since he joined the Taliban at 15 years outdated. But after the Taliban seized energy, he moved his household from their village within the east to a third-floor condo in Kabul.
On the primary morning of Eid this 12 months, he shared sweets along with his 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, each bouncing with pleasure on the prospect of spending the vacation within the huge metropolis. He welcomed his authorities’s announcement in regards to the begin of Eid with delight.
“It shows our unity, our position in the Islamic tradition — they announced Eid, and everyone had to accept that,” he mentioned.
Across the nation, some Afghans took benefit of the relative safety of the Taliban has been in a position to present for Eid celebrations. Hundreds of home vacationers flocked from across the nation to Bamiyan, a province in central Afghanistan identified for its pure magnificence and historical ruins, based on resort house owners and journey brokers.
Parwin Sadat, 32, a private-school instructor, made a 27-hour trek to Bamiyan along with her husband and 6-year-old baby from the western metropolis of Herat — a visit that will have been all however unattainable in the course of the warfare, when preventing alongside highways made cities islands of their very own. Visiting Bamiyan left Sadat awe-struck, she mentioned.
“I didn’t know that our country has such tourist destinations, historical places and so much beauty,” she mentioned.
In a modest home tucked into one in all Kabul’s many hillsides, Zhilla, 18, gathered with kin at her aunt’s home on the second day of Eid. Her younger cousins and siblings chased one another within the small courtyard. Inside, Zhilla marveled over her new cousin, simply 6 days outdated, sleeping peacefully in her mom’s lap.
“The baby knows we’ve been through a lot; she needs to behave for us,” joked Zhilla.
The earlier 12 months, she and her kin had gathered by the town’s Qargha reservoir for a picnic by the river, as girls and boys rode bicycles alongside its banks and took boats out on the water — a reminiscence that appears like a lifetime in the past, she mentioned .
“This Eid is the same as any other day — we cannot go out; we cannot be free,” she mentioned.
,
With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
