Closed on the first day

The first day of Eid al-Adha, expected around the middle of this week depending on the sighting, gets spent at home.

The meat from the morning goes to the elder's kitchen. Three generations sit at one table by noon. Nobody in that room is booking a restaurant, and nobody driving between two family houses is stopping for lunch on the way.

The small operator knows all of this and opens anyway, because a closed shutter reads as money left on the counter.

So the door opens on half a kitchen. Two on the line instead of six, because the rest have travelled. The delivery that was meant to land on the eve did not. A dozen covers come in across the whole lunch, most of them people with nowhere else to be, and every one of them waits thirty-five minutes for a plate that normally takes twelve.

Those dozen tables are the ones who write about it afterwards. A review does not carry the holiday calendar inside it. In August a family reading three stars and the words slow and understaffed is not reading about the first morning of Eid. They are reading about the restaurant.

An open door makes one claim, which is that the kitchen behind it is working. On the first day of Eid, in a great many small kitchens, it is not, and the claim gets made to the only customers in the country who are out.

Closing that day and opening on the second evening at full strength is the more honest of the two decisions. The visiting, the long lunches and the full rooms are on the second and third days anyway.