Ramadan Chronicles, final part in a series

First of all my apologies for not publishing this in a while, this post has been sitting in my drafts since I wrote it and forgot to hit the publish button.

This is the final part of a series on the topic of Ramadan, the time of fasting and contemplating in Islam. Actually this is about the period after Ramadan, the first week or so to be accurate.
Once Ramadan is over, after 30 days, when the moon has completed its cycle, the fasting is over and Eid is upon everybody. This is a time of celebrating and eating, party all the time.
I can't say too much about Eid from experience as this coincided with a vacation to my family in the Netherlands, but I did experience some of it. And I was surprised too find out that it seemed as if Ramadan was taken more seriously than Eid. What I mean is that it seemed to me that most of my colleagues around me where more affected by Ramadan, its consequences and what it meant for them than about Eid, although all the tweets and Facebook status updates where about celebrating Eid and not about Ramadan. Which makes kind of sense as well.

Interestingly enough, some Muslims are not really participating in the celebrations of Eid as their fellow Muslims do. They keep on fasting for a few more days, 7 if I am not mistaken. I am not really sure as to why they would do this, although I had some discussions about it. But prolonging the fasting for a few more days accounts for fasting for a whole year.
I would say that continuing the fasting for a longer while whereas all your family, friends and colleagues around you are not would seem to be harder to keep up than when everybody is fasting and whole society is changing pace and rhythm.

Now that Ramadan and Eid are all over and life in Cairo is back to normal, Cairo is also a better and nicer place to be. It has regained its buzz and vividness. I didn't like Ramadan at all. At work productivity came almost to a full stop and the cheery faces of my colleagues where mostly gone. Everybody was tired and cranky. Now everything is back to business as usual, and I like it that way.

Until next post about my experiences in Egypt.

Iwan