Field notes, Eid morning

Every Eid morning has the same notes. The sighting decides which morning it is, and the notes do not change.

The prayer ground fills before the light is properly up, and empties again in twenty minutes.

Children in clothes bought at eleven the night before.

The street is shut. Shutters down the length of a road that has not closed at this hour since the middle of February.

One bakery open, a queue coming out of the door onto the pavement, the same three boxes going to everybody in it.

By noon the grandmother's house is full and the cars are double parked to the corner.

The phone holds a stack of forwarded greetings, none of them read, and two from brands, also not read.

In the years the calendar puts Mother's Day beside Eid, there is one more note. One shutter on the closed street is half up, a metre of light under it, somebody inside working. The florist. Not open. Getting tomorrow ready.

Because tomorrow is Mother's Day, and the market is going back to the same house it is sitting in today.

Two occasions, one address, one weekend, and two plans written by two different people in two different months.

Today the market is at its mother's house. Tomorrow it is at its mother's house again. That is one plan, and it was written as two.