© Aaron Favila/AP PhotoA Pakistani girl displaced by floods cries as she fails to get gifts given by women volunteers as they prepare to celebrate Eid.
In a normal year Pakistanis would be scurrying home tomorrow night for a weekend of gluttony-tinged indulgence marking Eid al-Fitr, the end of the fasting month of Ramadan and Islam's near equivalent of Christmas. But this is no normal year.
With 21 million people - almost one-eighth of the population - affected by the worst floods in living memory, and broad swaths of the country still under water, many have no homes to go to, and no mosques to attend.
The traditional Eid present is a new set of clothes. But in Charsadda, a flood-ravaged area near Peshawar, Hakim Khan stood among the crushed masonry of his collapsed home and plucked a bundle of damp, mud-streaked shirts from the rubble. "These are our Eid clothes," he said bitterly.
Away from the flood-ravaged areas, in the main cities, sparkling Eid lights still drape the streets. But inside homes a new austerity has curtailed the festive spirit. Traders report disastrous pre-holiday sales while engaged couples have scaled back plans for extravagant nuptials during the autumn wedding season.
"There's a feeling of helplessness, people want to reach out," said filmmaker Samar Minallah.
A prominent Muslim preacher has offered ideas on how to do that. Tahir-ul-Qadri has bought television ads urging people to forgo new clothes in favour of flood donations. "I have a message for the nation: mark Eid in a very plain manner," he says.
Many are taking that message to heart. Shahzad Liaqat, a 29-year-old optometrist from Islamabad, recently drove to Nowshera, one of the worst-hit towns, in a truck laden with wheat, medicine and secondhand clothes. His family will be wearing old clothes this holiday. "When you see these people on the television, you can't celebrate anything," he said.
Business at Liaqat's glittering shop, which sells designer sunglasses, has plunged to the worst level in years. Some of this was flood-related austerity, he felt, but it was also a product of shrinking wallets. Pakistan's economy suffers galloping inflation and has become reliant on international financial bailouts.
In Charsadda the flood waters have receded, allowing foreign and local aid to flow in. Irfan Nawaz Raja, a Punjabi businessman, drove a truck filled with second-hand clothes and food packets donated by family and friends into a camp filled with white tents. He had been motivated to act by the images of human suffering on television. "It made us cry," he said.
Like many private donors, Raja said he wanted to bring his aid directly to the people, because he was suspicious about corruption in government channels. But such ad-hoc aid cannot meet the immense needs of flood-ravaged areas.
Next door to Hakim Khan, a wizened 85-year-old man sat quietly under a hastily-erected straw lean-to, watching over a small hill of bricks - the remains of his home - that he guarded with his walking cane. "If I leave, people will steal them," he said.
A few yards away Muhammad Iqbal, a 25-year-old rickshaw driver, wept as he described how he would spend Eid: sitting in his unpleasantly warm mould-covered tent, eating food handouts. His wife, eight months pregnant, stood quietly by as he wiped tears from his eyes; his five-year-old daughter chewed on a sweet, wearing a donated orange dress.
The black mood has been heightened by Pakistan's recent national traumas. On Wednesday at Lahore airport enraged cricket fans shouted "shame!" at Ejaz Butt, chairman of the country's troubled cricket board. One fan threw a shoe in his direction. Like much of the cricketers' batting during recent matches with England, it failed to connect.
A steady drumbeat of Taliban and US violence continues apace. This week, suicide bombers attacked three police stations across the north-west; yesterday a US drone fired a missile into a house in the tribal belt, killing five people - the fourth such strike in less than 24 hours. On the political front, the combination of crises has taken a toll on President Asif Ali Zardari who is widely disparaged as "Mr Ten Per Cent" - a nickname that once applied to alleged corruption but which, if current trends continue, could refer to his poll ratings instead.
Perhaps as a result of public scepticism, Pakistan's leaders are conspicuously flaunting their piety. The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, has promised to spend the holiday with flood victims; the leaders of the main opposition parties are urging their parliamentarians to do the same.
But, while most Pakistanis will treat the coming days as a welcome breather, the holiday could also be marred by disturbances.
Security services are bracing for a violent reaction to the planned burning of 200 copies of the Qur'an by a preacher in Florida on Saturday, the eve of the anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
"It could be rough," said one western diplomat in Islamabad.
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"One statement by a Pakistani cabinet minister yesterday about the floods has revealed the way ordinary people’s lives are being sacrificed for profit and US imperialism.
Giving evidence before one of the country’s senate standing committees, health secretary Khushnood Lashari stunned the members of the committee by stating that the airbase at Jacobabad in Sindh province is controlled by US forces and therefore is not available for desperately needed relief work.
"Health relief operations are not possible in the flood-affected areas of Jacobabad because the airbase is with the United States," he said.
Earlier, Doctor Jahanzeb Aurakzai, coordinator of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Centre, said, "Foreign health teams could not start relief operations in remote areas because there are no airstrips close to several areas, including Jacobabad."
Jacobabad’s people have been hit by devastating floods. Around 700,000 have been affected. The airbase could have been used to save lives.
The Shahbaz airbase in Jacobabad was leased to the US by former Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf.
It is used for raids on Afghanistan and to launch drone attacks that have killed hundreds of Pakistanis.
When the floods first struck the authorities deliberately diverted water away from the base, making thousands of people homeless...."
There's no media outreach for humanitarian aid because that would lead to exposure and outrage would follow.