In the living room of her house in the Delta city of Benha, Amina, a housewife in her late 60s, is keeping her TV tuned to the news. Even when she is on the phone, she does not turn off the TV and continues to flip through the satellite news channels.
This has been the case since the early days of the Israeli-American war on Iran that started on 28 February.
Amina is not into politics, especially not regional affairs. But she is heartbroken that her son, Ahmed, an engineer who works in Doha, will not be coming home for the Eid holiday, one that he has never missed since he got his job in the Qatari capital a few years ago.
“He would come for the last week of Ramadan to spend time with the family. He goes to the taraweeh [extended evening prayers] with his father, and we celebrate the Eid together,” Amina said. Today, she added, with the airspace of Qatar having been closed for about a week and with no signs of an end to the war, it is not clear whether Ahmed will make it for the last week of Ramadan and the Eid or not.
“It is such a pity. We were planning to have the wedding of his youngest sister right after the Eid in coordination with his stay in Egypt. We had planned everything, and now I cannot imagine having the wedding without him if he does not come, and I cannot imagine cancelling the wedding at such short notice,” Amina said.
“I really hope this war will end soon.”
Amina knows that many families across the country are anxiously waiting for the end of the war in order to be reunited with their loved ones for the Eid, and she is “praying that everyone will be reunited before the end of Ramadan so that the Eid will really bring joy.”
While some Muslims, essentially in the upper-middle and upper classes, have been increasingly celebrating many non-Islamic holidays, including the American holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving, the ultimate festivities are associated with the end of Ramadan and the Eid Al-Fitr.
It is an occasion that comes after a month-long period of fasting, and it is traditionally celebrated with biscuits that are widely served with tea with milk in the very early hours of the day before people go to Eid prayers at large mosques and open spaces allocated for communal prayers by the Ministry of Waqf (Religious Endowments) and carefully guarded by security.
“I think this is one of the most festive moments in Egypt as a whole,” said Adel Eissa, a photographer and founder of the Facebook page “Documentaries” that is dedicated to posting pictures from Egypt.
Having taken pictures around eastern Cairo where he lives for 11 years, Eissa said that there is a big difference in “the volume and mood of the festivities associated with the prayers of Eid Al-Fitr and those of Eid Al-Adha,” which is associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca and comes about 70 days after the end of Ramadan.
He said that the ritual of sheep-slaughtering in the early hours of Eid Al-Adha takes over the festivities. “The biggest communal prayers are for Eid Al-Fitr. I have always taken a lot more colourful pictures on that day than perhaps any other day of the year,” Eissa said.
Over the past few years, he added, the colourful details of the early morning prayers have been expanded with the newly introduced practice of having a large number of colourful balloons placed in a net hanging from the ceiling of the mosque and let loose at the end of the prayers for children to pick up.
“The balloons had for a long time been a sign of festivities in Egypt. They went out of fashion for a decade or so, but they made a strong comeback in 2018 when the tradition was reintroduced in a mosque in Heliopolis before it picked up and has since gone viral all over the country,” Eissa said.
He added that in most big mosques, the preparations for the balloons start after the prayers of the eve of 27 Ramadan, presumably the holiest night of the entire Muslim fasting month.
It is always a group of young men and women who are in the habit of attending taraweeh and Eid prayers in a key neighbourhood mosque that collect money to get the balloons for the occasion.
“It is strictly a volunteer thing to help give colour to the Eid prayers,” said Nour, a university student. “It is always so joyful for us to spend the evening before the Eid, once the announcement of the end of Ramadan is made by Dar Al-Ifta, to start putting the balloons in the net before we go to the mosque to hang it on the ceiling.”
According to Eissa, some of the best photographs he has taken of the Eid Al-Fitr prayers have been of children in the mosque jumping up to catch the balloons. “I guess the practice was so well-received that balloons have since been introduced to other communal Ramadan occasions, especially the famous Matariya Iftar,” he said.
Eissa is immensely pleased that he managed to come back to Cairo from Dubai where he is working just before the war started.
“I came back home, went to bed, and woke up to find out that the war had started and that several Gulf countries were closing their airspaces. I would have been very disappointed if I had missed Eid Al-Fitr in Egypt,” he said.
“I know that every country has its traditions when it comes to celebrating the occasion, but I am convinced that nothing compares to the colours of the Eid in Egypt with the large prayer spaces and the young kids playing around amid the ranks of men and women in the midst of the prayers.”
PREPARATIONS: In Qena, an Upper Egyptian governorate with a firm Sufi presence, the preparations for the early morning prayers of Eid Al-Fitr are particularly emotional, according to Ahmed Mustafa, another member of the team of photographers who share their shots on the “Documentaries” page.
A key sign of the advent of Eid Al-Fitr is the communal sharing of food in the open air, both for Iftar and Sohour, during the last days of the Muslim holy month. These meals are often followed by the shared washing of large blankets that are put on the ground of the open-air spaces for the prayers, he said.
“Obviously in Upper Egypt there is a division of spaces for men and women to ensure that segregation is observed. It is different from Cairo where everyone prays next to everyone else irrespective of gender,” Mustafa said.
There is also the preparation of colourful balloons and little candy packages that people living in apartment buildings throw down to the kids in the prayer spaces just as the sermon is coming to an end.
Meanwhile, he said that in the rural parts of Qena prayers are observed within the colorfully decorated walls of the village mosque and sweets are distributed at the gate of every mosque, usually by an older man.
Attending prayers at a large open-air venue and heading right after that to the cemeteries to say a prayer for loved ones who have passed away and then passing by all the relatives to wish them a good holiday is a sequence that people in Fayoum are dedicated to, according to Yehia Ahmed, a Cairo-based photographer who grew up in this governorate in Middle Egypt.
“One could argue that the Eid prayers are one and the same anywhere, but this is only partially true as there is a difference between Cairo and Fayoum,” he said.
Ahmed explained that unlike in Cairo in Fayoum the celebrations are done in a very communal way. “It is not just the prayers, but it is everything throughout the day, and even in the days before, as people line up to buy salted fish for the lunch of the first day of the Eid in line with tradition,” he said.
“During the last week of Ramadan, the preparations for the Eid start, and it is all very communal. Women and girls go together to buy the ingredients for the biscuits, and they gather in someone’s apartment to prepare and bake them throughout the night into the dawn prayers that they perform together,” he said.
“It is hard to miss the festive mood, with so many houses keeping their lights on throughout the night with the sounds of laughter and music coming from the balconies.”
A sports photographer for many years, Ahmed said that when it comes to Eid Al-Fitr he loves going back to Fayoum to capture the mood of rejoicing that is simply sensed and seen in almost every corner of the city.
“This is not always the case in Cairo, at least not in many neighbourhoods,” he said.
UNTRADITIONAL: Hadiya, a middle-aged housewife who lives in the eastern Cairo neighbourhood of Matariya, argued that in the older quarters of the city the tradition of communal celebrations continues to resist the increasing trend of less collective festivities.
“In the third week of Ramadan, we jointly prepare for an Iftar that is attended by tens of thousands of people, irrespective of faith or economic conditions,” she said.
Herself a Copt who is currently observing Lent, Hadiya took part in cooking what is estimated to be 100,000 meals for the Iftar of the 16th night of Ramadan.
“It is one of the most beautiful days of the year. We call it the Matariya national day because the entire neighbourhood is busy cooking, putting out the tables, hanging up decorations and balloons. It is an evening like no other, and it really brings joy to the heart of every single house in the neighbourhood,” she said.
“Clearly, this year there were many vegan meals because in Matariya Lent is also widely observed,” she added.
Two days later, Hadiya added, it was time to prepare new clothes for children and to bake biscuits.
“Everyone takes part. It doesn’t matter who is who, and then again when it is time for Easter, we replay the whole routine where everyone shares vegan meals during Holy Week and before that everyone comes together to make new clothes for the kids and prepare the biscuits,” Hadiya said.
Sharing, she said, makes everything enjoyable, “even at the hardest economic moments,” and it “adds a lot to the festive mood.”
The idea of sharing the festive mood of Eid Al-Fitr has evolved during the past decade or so, with more and more people from the upper and upper-middle classes opting to leave Cairo for a beach house — if it is summer, it would be the North Coast overlooking the Mediterranean, and if it is late winter or early spring, as is the case this year, then it is either Ain Sokhna or El Gouna overlooking the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea.
“When we were kids [in the 1980s], our parents would take us to our grandparents in rural Egypt, on rotation between the maternal and paternal grandparents for the first day of the Eid,” said Haniya, a 40-year-old business consultant.
“This was the case with most upper middle class families with rural origins, and this practice came to an end with the passing away of the grandparents,” she said. Then, she added, the routine changed with families going to the seaside for the holidays.
“There are still some communal elements about this new style of holidaying, even if not very big,” she said. This year, for example, she will be going with her parents, her siblings, and everyone’s children to Ain Sokhna, where everyone has a beach house next to each other.
“Investing in a beach house for the holidays has become customary now. Traditions change,” she added.
However, according to Saleh, a minibus driver who drives every day out of Cairo, not far from the main Ramses Train Station, at around 10 am to head to the Delta, “the vast majority of people still go back to their villages of origin for the Eid.”
“The week before the Eid is certainly the busiest. We work very hard, and instead of just going once from Cairo to Tanta every day, I do this route back and forth twice a day because there is so much demand,” he said.
He added that a few drivers still work on the first day of the Eid to drive those who were late in catching up with their families for the last days of Ramadan, especially those who arrive at Cairo Airport from overseas.
By noon of the first day of the Eid, those who still need to travel to the Delta or Upper Egypt mostly need to catch a train.
“Once it is afternoon, Cairo looks suddenly empty and silent. This very busy square [Ramses Square] looks deserted as if there is nobody living in the city. And then a few days later the noise comes back,” Saleh said.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 12 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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