Normally, Imran Khan’s Friday began with the sacrifice of a lamb.
But those aren’t general times. It is evident every day that Khan arrives at the paintings at a local COVID-19 control center, or that he is concerned about protecting her mother while she flies to Bangladesh to care for her unhealthy mother.
“I see the unfortunate, the poor families who want those tests and who can’t go back to work,” the 29-year-old said. “I see other people in poor health every day.”
That’s why it’s touching on the eve of Eid al-Adha.
The Muslim festival, which began at dusk on Thursday and ends on Friday night, commemorates the story of Ibrahim, the central figure of Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
In the scriptures, God demanded that Ibrahim sacrifice his son to show his commitment and obedience, but at the last minute He allowed a lamb to be presented.
Muslims honor this act by slaughtering animals every year and sharing meat with their communities and the less fortunate.
“History goes back to trials and tribulations,” Khan said. “Some other people are lucky enough to have money, wealth, wealth, education and others are not. But we must not forget that everyone has started from behind and those in the back want help.”
But this year is different: the maximum Islamic centers remain closed because of the new coronavirus, as they have been the holy month of Ramadan that began a few weeks after local government began giving orders to stay at home.
Even the holiest site of Islam has not been spared. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia announced new restrictions that particularly reduced the number of pilgrims who made a stopover in Mecca this week. Approximately 2.5 million Muslims make a stopover at the sacred site this time each year, while millions more pay attention to live broadcasts at communal celebrations around the world.
Many will continue to watch live broadcasts, but they will watch it in small teams rather than rallies that can lure thousands of Muslims to shut down the region’s Islamic centers, where 70,000 worshippers live.
“These celebrations were once something to look forward to, a break with life,” said Kabir Mohammed, an engineer at a small oil and fuel company. “You see almost everyone you haven’t noticed since the last Eid.”
At the same time, he said, the months of quarantine have joined the cavilations about the sacrifice and gratitude that are at the center of the festival. There will be no big parties or trips to amusement parks with his youngsters this year, however, Mohammed is grateful that the layoffs or holidays that some of his other Muslim friends in the besieged energy sector have saved him have been spared.
This makes it hard to feel more than gratitude. It’s even more complicated when you think about the trials Ibrahim faces.
“We have food every day, in a safe place, with temperature-controlled houses,” he said. “It puts that sacrifice into perspective, and I think in some tactics we are more grateful to the people around us.
Many continue to feel the effects of a declining economy. At Hamza Farm in Rosharon, Eid begins with long lines of other people waiting to pick up lambs or goats slaughtered there.
The owner, Mohammed Aziz, says he sells a few hundred animals before the holy day.
He expects a significant drop in the number of consumers this year, while paying more to unload the animals and, due to the dangers posed by coronavirus, higher wages for workers. Aziz said he accepted the monetary blow and felt in favor of those who would dispense it because of his own economic hardship.
“They can’t and I really feel bad because there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. “It’s sad.”
On Tuesday, amid rains and lightning, Taha Ashraf, 12, watched in silence as the herd of lambs and goats remained at Hamza Farm.
His circle of relatives celebrated the Eid with his circle of relatives in Pakistan, but may not this year because of the pandemic.
And then he focuses on the many possible options before him.
“I’m not sure, ” he said when asked how he would make his decision. “I’m just looking for a healthy goat, not too young or too old.”
Abul Azad would have been so composed.
As a child, he said he would spend time with the animal bought through his family, without even naming it, but inevitably developing near him before his death.
“I liked my pet, if you can call it that,” he says on the farm. “We had a great kind of relationship.
“I couldn’t stand it,” he says, pointing to the nearby rooms from which the sounds resonated. But his prospects have been replaced over time.
Today, Azad sees the massacres as a vital component of the food cycle that, in the era of grocery retail stores and UberEats, rarely occurs through consumers.
He now volunteers at Hamza Eid and jokes that he is an “expert” in sacrifice, meaning he understands how to keep animals calm in their last moments.
“It makes you really humble because each and every animal is the creation of a god, like me,” he says. “God asked me to raise them, and God asked me to kill them. The total situation moves me a lot.
Others take slightly different approaches to Eid and the mirror image it requires. Although most of them are at a disadvantage with respect to their friends and family, distance reminds them of what matters and what others before them have sacrificed and overcome.
That’s why Yasmin Saleh and her daughter have been thinking about concepts that would “put a smile on your face” in the coming days. They have breakfast delivered to some of their friends and plan other things.
“It’s more about charity and how we can help others,” said Saleh, who lives at The Woodlands. “This pandemic has taught us how dubious life is. I’ve heard of many other people who have left.
“Then how can I be to others with the time I have been given on this earth?”
Khan’s idea of the same factor long before his paintings at a COVID-19 establishment a few months ago.
It is even more applicable now, he said, with his mother and a grandmother in poor health than he fears being COVID-19.
He lives in Sugar Land, but still can’t show empathy for the many other people around the world who haven’t had the same opportunities as he has, adding those from Bangladesh, his family’s home country.
This year, he and others have raised about $900 to donate a cow to those in need, rather than sacrificing an animal themselves, as they normally would.
He hopes that this act of charity will bring blessings and, God willing, the fitness of his grandmother in poor physical condition.
And if not? “At least we did a good thing in her name,” he said. “But we’re all struggling. You just have to put your trust in God.”