Muslims around the world are preparing to mark the end of Ramadan with colorful Eid Al-Fitr celebrations and with more than 10 million foreigners in Saudi Arabia, the country is a melting pot of various nationalities who all mark the Islamic holiday in their own unique way.
From the Sudanese community to Pakistani expatriates, the food, outfits and traditional festivities on this occasion are varied and wide-ranging.
Majdi, a Sudanese driver working for a family in Taif, reveals how members of the Sudanese community celebrate while away from home.
“A group of guys and I gather at a farm lent to us by one of our employers and we start our early morning with a cup of tea with milk and deep-fried luqaimat before Eid prayers. We greet our fellow Muslims at the mosque and go home to relax until it’s time for lunch. Our meal comprises of Sudanese aseeda, or jelly bread, and a barbeque of different meat cuts. It reminds us of home,” Majdi told Arab News, adding that being around his fellow countrymen makes being away from home easier.
It is not only Muslims who celebrate Eid Al-Fitr, however.
Johnny, a Filipino barista, also marks the occasion with his Muslim and Christian friends. The celebrations start later in the evening with traditional Filipino food brought by their friends and neighbors.
“We Filipinos are very hospitable and we hold a picnic every year… it feels good to be around everyone on such a joyous occasion. I’ve been in Saudi Arabia for a little over three years now and celebrating Eid isn’t so bad with everyone around.”
But what treats can be found on a typical Filipino table?
“Common Filipino foods include beef bulalo, grilled fish and the Pinoy version of leche flan,” he said.
It is not uncommon to see Muslims — regardless of their nationality — dressed up in new clothes for the occasion. Sweets and money are distributed to eager children and families often gather to celebrate together.
Stroll through Jeddah’s Al-Aziziyah district in the run-up to Eid and you will find that the shop windows are filled with colorful displays of the newest and brightest fabrics as Indian and Pakistani merchants advertise the latest sari and salwar kameez collections.
For many Indians and Pakistanis in the Kingdom, Eid begins with a phone call home as well as a breakfast of festive goodies.
On the big day, children are dressed in their snazziest outfits and little girls and boys — in their frocks and kurtas — hand out sweets at the mosque.
Women and young girls often decorate their palms with henna designs and adorn their wrists with gold and silver bangles. After the Eid prayers, families visit their friends and relatives and often enjoy special foods made for the occasion.
One of the most popular dishes served by Indians and Pakistanis is seviyan, a sweet, milky dish loved by children and adults alike.
It is a traditional dessert of vermicelli boiled in sweetened milk. Cardamom, pistachios and raisins are often added to infuse the dish with extra flavor.
“It’s the taste of our childhood; it’s the dish that I crave most from home because it’s served at weddings and on special occasions such as Eid. My grandmother used to make the finest seviyan and now my wife makes her own version of it that is just as if it were from home,” Mohammed, a Pakistani tailor who has lived in the Kingdom for more than 15 years, told Arab News.
“We celebrate with my large family since both my brothers have moved here and we’re lucky to have my mother here as well during the Eid festivities. It’s a special time of the year when we all gather wearing our best clothes.
“We all head out to the mosque together while our wives and mother prepare great dishes for us to have all day long. There’s our traditional biryani and chicken haleem, of course seviyan, freshly-made chapattis, carrot halva and so many more dishes. My wife has also learned a few traditional Saudi dishes that she incorporates into our celebrations as well,” Mohammed added.
This year, residents of Saudi Arabia who hail from across the world will celebrate Eid as they have always done — with prayers, delicious food and quality time with their families.
• life.style@arabnews.com
Around the world in Saudi Arabia: How the Kingdom’s expats mark Eid
Around the world in Saudi Arabia: How the Kingdom’s expats mark Eid
Crash dummies used in car safety tests are still modeled after men despite higher risks for women
- Maria Weston Kuhn, a survivor of a near-fatal accident, created a nonprofit to help change that
- Her organization is asking members of Congress to sign onto a bill that would mandate the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to upgrade the standards
Maria Weston Kuhn had one lingering question about the car crash that forced her to have emergency surgery during a vacation in Ireland: Why did she and her mother sustain serious injuries while her father and brother, who sat in the front, emerge unscathed?
“It was a head-on crash and they were closest to the point of contact,” said Kuhn, now 25, who missed a semester of college to recover from the 2019 collision that caused her seat belt to slide off her hips and rupture her intestines by pinning them against her spine. “That was an early clue that something else was going on.”
When Kuhn returned home to Maine, she found an article her grandma had clipped from Consumer Reports and left on her bed. Women are 73 percent more likely to be injured in a frontal crash, she learned, yet the dummy used in vehicle tests by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration dates back to the 1970s and is still modeled almost entirely off the body of a man.
A survivor becomes an activist
Kuhn, who is starting law school at New York University this fall, took action and founded the nonprofit Drive US Forward. Its aim was to raise public awareness and eventually encourage members of Congress to sign onto a bill that would require NHTSA to incorporate a more advanced female dummy into its testing.
The agency has the final word on whether cars get pulled from the market, and the kind of dummy used in its safety tests could impact which ones receive coveted five-star ratings.
“It seems like we have an easy solution here where we can have crash test dummies that reflect an average woman as well as a man,” Sen. Deb Fischer, a Nebraska Republican who has introduced the legislation the past two sessions, told The Associated Press.
Senators from both parties have signed onto Fischer’s “She Drives Act,” and the transportation secretaries from the past two presidential administrations have expressed support for updating the rules.
But for various reasons, the push for new safety requirements has been moving at a sluggish pace. That’s particularly true in the US, where much of the research is happening and where around 40,000 people are killed each year in car crashes.
Evolution of a crash test dummy
The crash test dummy currently used in NHTSA five-star testing is called the Hybrid III, which was developed in 1978 and modeled after a 5-foot-9, 171-pound man (the average size in the 1970s but about 29 pounds lighter than today’s average). What’s known as the female dummy is essentially a much smaller version of the male model with a rubber jacket to represent breasts. It’s routinely tested in the passenger seat or the back seat but seldom in the driver’s seat, even though the majority of licensed drivers are women.
“What they didn’t do is design a crash test dummy that has all the sensors in the areas where a woman would be injured differently than a man,” said Christopher O’Connor, president and CEO of the Farmington Hills, Michigan-based Humanetics Group, which has spent more than a decade developing and refining one.
A female dummy from Humanetics equipped with all of the available sensors costs around $1 million, about twice the cost of the Hybrid used now.
But, O’Connor says, the more expensive dummy far more accurately reflects the anatomical differences between the sexes — including in the shape of the neck, collarbone, pelvis, and legs, which one NHTSA study found account for about 80 percent more injuries by women in a car crash compared to men.
Such physical dummies will always be needed for vehicle safety tests, and to verify the accuracy of virtual tests, O’Connor said.
Europe incorporated the more advanced male dummy developed by Humanetics’ engineers, the THOR 50M (based on a 50th percentile man), into its testing procedures soon after Kuhn’s 2019 crash in Ireland. Several other countries, including China and Japan, have adopted it as well.
But that model and the female version the company uses for comparison, the THOR 5F (based on a 5th percentile woman), have been met with skepticism from some American automakers who argue the more sophisticated devices may exaggerate injury risks and undercut the value of some safety features such as seat belts and airbags.
A debate over whether more sensors mean more safety
Bridget Walchesky, 19, had to be flown to a hospital, where she required eight surgeries over a month, after a 2022 crash near her home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, that killed her friend, who was driving. While acknowledging the seat belt likely saved her life, Walchesky said some of the injuries — including her broken collarbone — were the result of it pinning her too tightly, which she views as something better safety testing focused on women could improve.
“Seat belts aren’t really built for bodies on females,” Walchesky said. “Some of my injuries, the way the force hit me, they were probably worsened.”
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry trade group, said in a statement to the AP that the better way to ensure safety — which it called its top priority — is through upgrades to the existing Hybrid dummy rather than mandating a new one.
“This can happen on a faster timeline and lead to quicker safety improvements than requiring NHTSA to adopt unproven crash test dummy technology,” the alliance said.
Humanetics’ THOR dummies received high marks in the vehicle safety agency’s early tests. Using cadavers from actual crashes to compare the results, NHTSA found they outperformed the existing Hybrid in predicting almost all injuries — including to the head, neck, shoulders, abdomen and legs.
A separate review by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research arm funded by auto insurers, was far more critical of the dummy’s ability to predict chest injuries in a frontal crash. Despite the vast expansion in the number of sensors, the insurance institute’s testing found, the male THOR dummy was less accurate than the current Hybrid dummies, which also had limitations.
“More isn’t necessarily better,” said Jessica Jermakian, senior vice president for vehicle research at IIHS. “You also have to be confident that the data is telling you the right things about how a real person would fare in that crash.”
The slow pace of changing the rules
NHTSA’s budget plan commits to developing the female THOR 5F version with the ultimate goal of incorporating it into the testing. But there could be a long wait considering the THOR’s male version adopted by other countries is still awaiting final approval in the US
A 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office, which conducts research for Congress, cited numerous “missed milestones” in NHTSA’s development of various crash dummy enhancements — including in the THOR models.
Kuhn acknowledges being frustrated by the slow process of trying to change the regulations. She says she understands why there’s reluctance from auto companies if they fear being forced to make widespread design changes with more consideration for women’s safety.
“Fortunately, they have very skilled engineers and they’ll figure it out,” she said.
Couples tie the knot during a festival on an Amsterdam ring road
- “It just seemed like super fun idea,” Lisowska said
- “It’s a nice party we didn’t have to organize,” said Iozzelli
AMSTERDAM: Securing a coveted slot to exchange wedding rings on Amsterdam’s usually traffic-choked ring road seemed like a good omen for Zuzanna Lisowska and Yuri Iozzelli’s future life together.
“It just seemed like super fun idea,” Lisowska said. “And, you know, statistics were on our side. There were 400 couples who wanted to do it, so we feel really lucky to have been chosen.”
Friends and total strangers cheered and clapped as they told each other “I do!” as part of a day-long festival on parts of the A10 highway that circles the Dutch capital closed to traffic for the day.
“It’s a nice party we didn’t have to organize,” said Iozzelli.
Their only regret was not being able to bring their pet rabbit. “It was too hot,” Lisowska said after exchanging rings with Iozzelli.
The city that is known for partying said that some 600,000 people tried to get access to the ring road festival last month when more than 200,000 free tickets were made available.
Curious city folk, from parents pushing strollers to students and grandparents, stopped to watch the weddings and enjoyed the one-off opportunity to see the road without the usual cacophony of cars.
Among them was communications student Kyra Smit.
“It’s really fun because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” she said. “It’s so fun that you can say to people, wow, I’m married on the rings, so I really like this.”
The day was packed with events from music performances to readings, meetups and a fun run, shortened because of the heat. Organizers even placed a temporary forest of more than 8,000 trees on the blacktop.
The municipality laid on extra water taps and places where revellers could slap on sun block as temperatures soared to 30 degrees Celsius (86F) and upwards on the road surface.
The city’s official birthday is Oct. 27, reflecting the first time a variant of its name was used in an official document, and is staging celebratory events in the year leading up to that date. The festival on the ring road is the biggest so far and gave Amsterdam residents a new view of their ring road.
“It’s quite strange because normally you drive here and now you’re walking, so that’s a totally different situation,” said Marjolein de Bruijne, who works close to the A10.
Indians stretch, breathe and balance to mark International Day of Yoga
- Yoga is one of India’s most successful cultural exports after Bollywood
NEW DELHI: Tens of thousands of people across India stretched in public parks and on sandy beaches Saturday to mark the 11th International Day of Yoga.
The mass yoga sessions were held in many Indian states, where crowds attempted various poses and practiced breathing exercises. Indian military personnel also performed yoga in the icy heights of Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas and on naval ships anchored in the Bay of Bengal.
Similar sessions were planned in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.
“I feel that yoga keeps us spiritually fit, mentally fit and helps us manage stress. That’s why I feel that people should take out at least 30 minutes every day for yoga to keep themselves fit,” said Rajiv Ranjan, who participated in an event in the Indian capital of New Delhi.
Yoga is one of India’s most successful cultural exports after Bollywood. It has also been enlisted for diplomacy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has harnessed it for cultural soft power as the country takes on a larger role in world affairs.
Modi persuaded the UN to designate the annual International Day of Yoga in 2014. The theme this year was “Yoga for One Earth, One Health.”
Modi performed yoga among a seaside crowd in the southern city of Visakhapatnam city, and said “Yoga leads us on a journey toward oneness with world.” Amid a checkerboard of yoga mats covering the beach, Modi took his spot on a mat and did breathing exercises, backbends and other poses.
“Let this Yoga Day mark the beginning of Yoga for humanity 2.0, where inner peace becomes global policy,” he said.
As Modi has pushed yoga, ministers, government officials and Indian military personnel have gone on social media to show themselves folding in different poses.
In capital New Delhi, scores of people from all walks of life and age groups gathered at the sprawling Lodhi Gardens, following an instructor on stage.
“Yoga for me is like balancing between inner world and outer world,” said Siddharth Maheshwari, a startup manager who joined the event.
Netherlands returns 119 looted artifacts known as Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
ABUJA, Nigeria: The Netherlands on Thursday returned 119 artifacts looted from Nigeria, including human and animal figures, plaques, royal regalia and a bell.
The artifacts, known as the Benin Bronzes and mostly housed in a museum in the city of Leiden, were looted in the late 19th century by British soldiers.
In recent years, museums across Europe and North America have moved to address ownership disputes over artifacts looted during the colonial era. They were returned at the request of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments.
During the handover ceremony in Edo State, Oba Ewuare II, the monarch and custodian of Benin culture, described the return of the artifacts as a “divine intervention.” The Benin Bronzes were returned at the request of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments.
The restitution is a testament to the power of prayer and determination, the monarch said.
The Dutch government is committed to returning artifacts that do not belong to the country, said Marieke Van Bommel, director of the Wereld Museum.
Olugbile Holloway, the commission’s director, said the return of 119 artifacts marks the largest single repatriation to date and that his organization is working hard to recover more items looted during colonial times.
Nigeria formally requested the return of hundreds of objects from museums around the world in 2022. Some 72 objects were returned from a London museum that year while 31 were returned from a museum in Rhode Island.
The Benin Bronzes were stolen in 1897 when British forces under the command of Sir Henry Rawson sacked the Benin kingdom and forced Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, the monarch at the time, into a six-month exile. Benin is located in modern-day southern Nigeria.
Napoleon’s iconic bicorne hat and personal treasures expected to fetch millions in Paris
PARIS: After Hollywood’s “Napoleon” exposed the legendary emperor to a new generation, over 100 relics — which shaped empires, broke hearts and spawned centuries of fascination — are on display in Paris ahead of what experts call one of the most important Napoleonic auctions ever staged.
His battered military hat. A sleeve from his red velvet coat. Even the divorce papers that ended one of history’s most tormented romances — with Josephine, the empress who haunted him to the end.
Two centuries after his downfall, Napoleon remains both revered and controversial in France — but above all, unavoidable. Polls have shown that many admire his vision and achievements, while others condemn his wars and authoritarian rule. Nearly all agree his legacy still shapes the nation.
“These are not just museum pieces. They’re fragments of a life that changed history,” said Louis-Xavier Joseph, Sotheby’s head of European furniture, who helped assemble the trove. “You can literally hold a piece of Napoleon’s world in your hand.”
From battlefields to boudoirs
The auction — aiming to make in excess of 7 million euros — is a biography in objects. The centerpiece is Napoleon’s iconic bicorne hat, the black felt chapeau he wore in battle — with wings parallel to his shoulders — so soldiers and enemies could spot him instantly through the gunpowder haze.
“Put a bicorne on a table, and people think of Napoleon immediately,” Joseph said. “It’s like the laurel crown of Julius Caesar.”
The hat is estimated to sell for at least over half a million dollars.
For all the pageantry — throne, swords, the Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honor — the auction’s true power comes from its intimacy. It includes the handwritten codicil of Napoleon’s final will, composed in paranoia and illness on Saint Helena.
There is the heartbreakingly personal: the red portfolio that once contained his divorce decree from Josephine, the religious marriage certificate that formalized their love and a dressing table designed for the empress. Her famed mirror reflects the ambition and tragedy of their alliance.
“Napoleon was a great lover; his letters that he wrote are full of fervor, of love, of passion,” Joseph said. “It was also a man who paid attention to his image. Maybe one of the first to be so careful of his image, both public and private.”
A new generation of exposure
The auction’s timing is cinematic. The 2023 biopic grossed over $220 million worldwide and reanimated Napoleon’s myth for a TikTok generation hungry for stories of ambition, downfall and doomed romance.
The auction preview is open to the public, running through June 24, with the auction set for June 25.
Not far from the Arc de Triomphe monument dedicated to the general’s victories, Djamal Oussedik, 22, shrugged: “Everyone grows up with Napoleon, for better or worse. Some people admire him, others blame him for everything. But to see his hat and his bed, you remember he was a real man, not just a legend.”
“You can’t escape him, even if you wanted to. He’s part of being French,” said teacher Laure Mallet, 51.
History as spectacle
The exhibition is a spectacle crafted by celebrity designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, famed for dressing Lady Gaga and Pope John Paul II.
“I wanted to electrify history,” Castelbajac said. “This isn’t a mausoleum, it’s a pop culture installation. Today’s collectors buy a Napoleon artifact the way they’d buy a guitar from Jimi Hendrix. They want a cabinet of curiosities.”
He’s filled the show with fog, hypnotic music and immersive rooms. One is inspired by the camouflage colors of Fontainebleau. Another is anchored by Napoleon’s legendary folding bed. “I create the fog in the entrance of the Sotheby’s building because the elements of nature were an accomplice to Napoleon’s strategy,” the designer said.
Castelbajac, who said his ancestor fought in Napoleon’s Russian campaign, brought a personal touch. “I covered the emperor’s bed in original canvas. You can feel he was just alone, facing all he had built. There’s a ghostly presence.”
He even created something Napoleon only dreamed of. “Napoleon always wanted a green flag instead of the blue, white, red tricolore of the revolution,” he said, smiling. “He never got one. So I made it for Sotheby’s.”
