© Aaron Favila/AP Photo
A Pakistani girl displaced by floods cries as she fails to get gifts given by women volunteers as they prepare to celebrate Eid.
A 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.
