From the New Crescent

My dearest …,

People have been watching for me all evening. They go out after sunset and look low in the west, and somebody sees me first and tells everybody else, and then the whole thing begins. Tonight, in one particular house, somebody was watching: .

I am only a thin bright edge of light, . I do not do anything. What I do is arrive, and let everybody know that the hard part is finished. A whole month of getting up before dawn, of being hungry in the afternoon, of your family being patient with each other when it would be much easier not to be. And then I turn up, and it is over, and tomorrow is the good day.

So tomorrow there will be new clothes, and food from early in the morning, and people coming to the house, and money pressed into your hand by somebody who is pleased to see you. Take all of it. It was earned — by you if you fasted, and by everyone around you if you were too small to.

And do the other part too, the part that is not about sweets. Somebody in your street has less than you do. Before you eat, make sure they have eaten. That is not an extra thing tacked on the end of the festival. That is what the festival is made of.

Eid Mubarak, little one,
from the thin bright edge of the sky —

The Eid Moon

The Crescent That Brings the News

P.S. — I noticed . I see a great deal from up here and I am not in the habit of forgetting the good bits.