Is Eid Al-Fitr as pleasant as it used to be? Nahed Nassr remembers the good old days Hanan, 33, remembers the time she spent at her grandmother's house in Al-Fashn, Beni Sweif, as the best in her life: "after my father died, my mother decided we should move there so we'd be with our aunts and uncles..." It is the smell of ghee and flour cooking that brings back that warm atmosphere most clearly. Preparations for the Eid Al-Fitr (the Lesser Bairam) -- the celebration of the end of the yearly fast, as opposed to the Eid Al-Adha (Greater Bairam), the Feast of Sacrifice -- would begin midway through Ramadan. And among them the making of kahk, Eid cookies sprinkled with powdered sugar, was the most important. Hanan remembers the family being sufficiently well off to employ a female professional to help with the task: "it was a joy for my sisters, my cousins and myself to sit around in a circle while she kneaded the ingredients with magic hands." Along with the girls, Hanan was assigned the task of decorating the cookies before they went into the oven, the mothers having set them on trays; age-old copper utensils were used to variegate the surface. Carrying the trays to the bakery was the boys' job, but the girls accompanied them to mark the trays with their names in chalk, so that they wouldn't be mixed up with trays from other households: "each girl would write her name on one or more trays. I liked that part a lot." But the peak of the fun was when the kahk came back, because that was when the girls -- given powder sugar to sprinkle onto the cookies -- would try out different ways of tasting the sweet dust. Today, Hanan says, her diet prevents her from having the smallest bite of mass-produced patisserie as opposed to homemade kahk, but she likes to watch it being made on TV cooking programmes, noting how little the process differs from that of Al-Fashn. For Um Ahmed, 60, from the Cairo neighbourhood of Sharabeya, kahk- making took place on a somewhat larger scale than that of the family. Practically everyone in the neighbourhood would gather at the house where kahk was being made, one household at a time, and baking took place in a traditional oven which everyone had contributed towards establishing and maintaining. For Um Ahmed, however, it is less kahk than the tradition of new clothes -- upheld on both Eids -- that defines the holiday for her, even now: "On the waqfa, night before the Eid, we would have the Eid bath and then change into a new galabeya to spend the evening in; in the morning we each have a new dress, purse and shoes. It seems young people no longer pay much attention to the idea of new clothes for the Eid." The clothes were tailor- made: a male terzi near the workplace of Um Ahmed's uncle on Suleiman Pasha Road took the measurements, while a woman tailor came home to do the galabeyas. "Nothing compares to spending a day at the terzi 's..." New clothes were essential because children and young people went out to spend their eidiyyah, a sum of money given by older members of the family on the occasion. "My uncles would visit us in the morning, directly after the Eid prayers, and everyone got their eidiyyah," Hanan recalls. She would spend the money going on funfair rides in the neighbourhood, or gathering around puppeteers and magicians. But since visits are expected in the evening, as Um Ahmed says, "it isn't only a question of new clothes. My mother would not spread out the carpets except on the Eid. The house should be thoroughly dusted, if not repainted, the curtains replaced. People used to think of things they needed to buy for the house and say, 'well, I'll get it around Eid time!' Nowadays people do nothing. These curtains here, they will never be replaced until they are completely threadbare and torn all over..." In place of family visits, Hanan says, nowadays people phone or SMS. At least the tradition of going to the cinema on Eid day lives on, with new releases screened every year. Um Ahmed remembers going to see Maaboudat Al-Gamahir (Idol), starring singing icons Abdel-Halim Hafez and Shadia. "It was the first time I went to the cinema, and it was the Eid release. My father was no movie goer, so I went with my cousin. I was in my teens and in love with Abdel-Halim," she giggles, recalling the "lovely" feeling of going to see her beloved star in her "gorgeous" new getup. Film critic Farid Marei, who goes to the movies more than once a week for the whole year -- and loves it -- says her fondest memories are of seeing new films on Eid day. Today the streets are so crowded, especially where cinemas open their doors, and the atmosphere so "crazy", she says, it is madness to go to the cinema during Eid: "The best thing I can do is to go away to beach and spend a few days catching up with the family." Cairo is no longer as secure as it once was, and people are too busy to uphold values of solidarity and tolerance -- to which the Eid cinema tradition used to bear testimony. The erosion Eid celebrations over the last few decades is something sociologist Shadia El-Baz links to the development of Egyptian social attitudes, with the (extended) family relegated to a weaker role and the fragmentation of the social fabric it held together. Young people are no longer as attached to their families, neighbours no longer play a part in each other's lives and family activities are no longer prioritised. El-Baz recalls her own childhood and adolescence as a time when "there were rules": she was not allowed to go out to celebrate the Eid with friends if her aunt was visiting. "And we were happy with family gatherings whether at our home or at that of a relation," she adds. The Eid, she says, was an occasion for city dwellers -- mostly immigrants from the countryside -- to visit their provincial homes and strengthen extended family ties, a drive they inculcated in their children: "when I was young my father was pretty much synonymous with God, my mother was my closest soul mate. That's not the case for younger generations." This is to do with the increasing busyness of parents, she elaborates, but also with life conditions that are more difficult than they have ever been. She also associates these developments with globalisation eradicating cultural identity and killing traditions. The only thing that gives her any Eid feeling at all, she says, is her daughter buying her a packet of kahk, even if it is not home-made.
