Eid Celebration with the Hazara Association of Victoria

This past weekend, I went to a huge-scale celebration of the festival of Eid ul-Adha. On Saturday afternoon I was doing a talk at a youth festival in Belgrave, then my friend Ali came to meet me in Belgrave and together we drove to Dandenong. After his explanation of what the plan was, I was expecting to turn up to someone's house and have a cup of tea and perhaps a cucumber sandwich. But when we rolled up and there were small armies of children running around in traditional dress, swarms of beautiful dark-eyed women in head-dress, and hoards of men greeting eachother with a warm embrace, I knew this was no ordinary Aussie Saturday night barbie!! We made our way into the church hall, to be greeted with the sight of literally HUNDREDS of hazaras! It was bedlam! And for a good half hour I was literally the only Aussie in the room! It was a beautiful night. Traditional Afghan music played by some teenagers - it was great actually, they were all a bit cool for school, had Chapel street mullet / mohawks, and were playing the drums and the sitar and the synthesiser. It was an Afghan teen garage band! A bit like watching a completely warped early-days silverchair gig. Weird. It was quite cool though.

It came time for dinner, which I was a bit nervous about because i was STARVING, and by this time there were at least five or six hundred people in the hall. I wondered, how can they POSSIBLY feed this many people? How can they a) make enough food in one little Catholic church hall kitchen and b) serve it before the food gets cold and the evening slowly melts into early next week? But, lo and behold, it turns out I was wrong to worry. The cooks enlisted 20-30 men, who all stood in a long, flexible line, spaced a couple of metres apart across the entire hall. The cooks then began handing plates of steaming hot food (oh my GOODNESS it was good) to the first guy in the queue, who would then hand it along the line, and slowly but surely, each person in the room got a tummy full of delicious warm home-made Afghan fare. It was fantastic! I'll try to write a little bit more about this, because it was really quite a special night. There was a comedy sketch at the end, and because it was all in Persian I understood approximately squat. But i took great delight in looking backwards, over my shoulder, to the hundreds of smiling, laughing faces. Eyebrows raised in expectation of the next joke, faces already half laughing before the punchline arrives. The Hazara people look so distinctive, yet there's such diversity, and in those I've had the privilege to meet, I have seen an incredible capacity for laughter and joy.

The man organising this event was Mohammad Arif - president of the Hazara Association of Victoria, and best friend to Ali Sarwari. On Monday night, his 7-year wait for permanent residency (thus the ability to travel to visit his family, and head to New Zealand to visit Ali) ended, with his receipt of a long-awaited letter from DIMIA. Half an hour later, he received a phonecall informing him that Ali had died. The cruelty of this timing is just horrible. I'm told he's going to New Zealand tomorrow, to farewell his best friend's body, and comfort his grieving family. God be with them all...