The evening before Eid, the mothers made magic happen

Saturday evening, foorated kilos and his two zealous children hovered around a Ramadan decorative calendar who put about a month ago in their Brooklyn home.

“Yallah, Giramolo,” said Mrs. Fourati. Together, they turned it up and revealed the other side: “Eid Mubarak. The Mohyeldin Fourati family.” The sun had just been set, the crescent moon has been spotted and was confirmed: Eid Al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of the sacred month of fasting for Muslims, would have been Sunday.

The decoration of the house during Ramadan and Eid is a relatively new tradition that Mrs. Fourati, a model and the co-founder of a brand called Osay, has adopted. As his children have aged, they asked other questions about their faith.

In Tunis, where Mrs. Fourati, 39 years old, grew up with a large family, Ramadan’s celebrations were all around her. The evening before Eid, he remembered to run on the streets surrounding his house with his friends while the fireworks illuminated the sky.

“This is how I grew up and I want to take a look at how we grew up,” said Mrs. Fourati, who created funny ways for her children to explore being Muslims.

Then he separated his children, who were playing each other with each other and brought them to a bedroom on the upper floor to show them their new clothes for a morning prayer they had planned to participate A Washington Square Park. For Idris, 6, Mrs. Donori presented a white Jebba, a traditional Tunisian guise and a red cheach, a chest cylindrical hat. He had some options for Dora, 8 – or a Unshalite Jeba combined with a golden belt or a black Palestinian Thobe. Dora jumped up and down and exclaimed that she liked the purple dress: “She is brilliant and has more jewels”.

After a spiritual and disciplined month of fasting, Eid Al-Fitr is a joyful holiday for Muslims. Show new clothes, Participate in festivalsEat special occasions e sweets And visit friends and relatives. But none of this would be possible without the mothers of the families, who, the day before, make magic happen.

In New York, where almost 800,000 Muslims resideMany mothers have created new preparation rituals with their families while carrying out the old ones from their childhood.

Growing up in the 80s on an island in Bangladesh called Sandwip, Mahima Begum and his five brothers rushed to the local apple, or Festival, the morning of Eid, where they bought colored bracelets and Bengali sweets. When they returned home, they were welcomed with a party prepared by the mother, who had remained all night to prepare her.

“We weren’t doing anything,” said Mrs. Begum. “My mother does everything.”

Since then Mrs. Begum has inherited responsibility. Every year, he brings together an impressive diffusion of EID for the approximately 40 relatives who visit it at home In the Kensington section by Brooklyn. The preparation process is not a joke.

“First, I think of what my children like,” said Mrs. Begum, 49 years old. “That kind of food I do.”

Mrs. Begum started cooking at 4 in the morning before EID. He prepared dishes like Biryani of beef and korma di goat, as well as his copyright, the chicken Jhal Fry, a fried chicken in Masala sprinkled with sweet and spicy sauce. He conceived the recipe when his daughter, Shama Kabir, was 2 years old. (It keeps track of time not by year, but rather from the age of its children.) Since then it has cooked the dish every EID.

Mrs. Kabir, 29,, a creator of food content who has acquired interest in cooking after observing her mother in the kitchen, helps the way she can, especially when she grew up. His offer in recent years has been a dessert that calls a bad ras cake. It is a diasporic creation: a sponge cake in almond crust, similar to tres leches, with infused milk of Masala seasoned with light whipped cream.

“I want you to feel as if he were appreciated,” said Mrs. Kabir. “He is doing it throughout my life. So I want you to see and understand that what he is doing is very commendable.”

In the Bronx High Bridge section, Rammaulaye Diallo had a lot of help from his two daughters and from his daughter -in -law while preparing the spread of Eid. The star was Thiebou Yapp, a Senegalese rice and beef rice.

Shortly before one in the morning, Mrs. Diallo, a 52 -year -old nurse, transferred marinated meat to a pot so large as to occupy two burners on the stove. Hence, he focused his attention on the Yassa, a dish of vermicelli made with onion sauce and gave one of his daughters instructions in Fulani to bring some water to the pot.

“We don’t measure, let’s cook only,” said Mrs. Diallo.

His daughters moved away from the kitchen to set up the dining table with a new tablecloth purchased during a trip to Morocco. They had also changed the sheets and cleaned the curtains, a practice that Mrs. Diallo carried forward from her mother to Thiès, in Senegal.

“There is a myth that said that Eid should find everything clean,” explained Mrs. Diallo, who moved to New York with her family in 2006. “No dirty clothes, nothing. The day is so big and the day is so holy, so they believe that everything should be clean for the celebration.”

“I try to make sure they take the holidays seriously,” added Mrs. Diallo on her daughters. “Being here is not easy. Many people are westernized and forget their culture.”

His efforts were fruitful. Safiatou Diallo, 28 years old, his eldest, said that his favorite part on EID is to choose the fabric and style for his traditional Fulani outfit and make it handmade by a tailor. “Sometimes I also fantasized to return to Africa and wear African clothes every day,” he said.

Yelda Ali thought a lot about how to immerse her 15 month old daughter, IMAN in her culture. Mrs. Ali, 39, daughter of Afghan refugees, grew up celebrating the holiday home in Edmonton, Alberta. But for most of his 16 years in New York, he had no houses to jump to. (Her family remains in Canada.) Now she is a mother, she has cultivated her family with her husband, Anthony Mejia, filling her with recreated traditions.

“I feel that traditions help us to feel rooted,” said Mrs. Ali, a DJ in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn. “We still have the privilege of our language. We still have the privilege of recipes, songs, music. For me, cultural conservation is so important. This is our existence, and if we do not continue to maintain these things in the community and to be intentional to convey things, they will die so many things they die in the diaspora – we have seen happening.”

But there is also so much birth and rebirth in the diaspora.

Every EID, Mrs. Ali, 39, plans to collect a new recipe that had been handed down on her maternal part – unwritten recipes that wants to keep alive. This year, the recipe was an Afghan pasta cooked with ground meat and seasoned with yogurt and dry mint.

Mr. Mejia, who is Dominican, has developed a passion to learn to cook Afghan dishes. It was in the kitchen to fry the onions for the dish, while Mrs. Ali was steaming IMAN’s floral dress in the next room. Mrs. Ali had started playing a vibrant Afghan folk music, who eliminated IMAN, who was dancing, to do.

Their plan for EID was to create an apple, or picnic, in Herbert von King Park, with Afghan pasta and some traditional desserts. Melas is very common in Afghan communities and although generally they are quite large, here in New York, Mrs. Ali would have her mini apple with her new family.

“It concerns quality,” said Ali, “not quantity, right?”