Iraqi children are looking forward to celebrating Eid al-Fitr

BAGHDAD, December 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Baghdadis are preparing to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, one of the main Muslim festivals of the year, convinced that a U.S. strike on the country is inevitable.

“We’ve just had to get used to it – it’s been two decades now and a whole generation has grown up knowing nothing but war or the threat of it,” says Adel, a 42-year-old Arabic calligrapher as he prepared for the Eid al-Fitr holiday later this week.

“Military action is inevitable, U.N. inspectors or no U.N. inspectors,” he says. “The onslaught is going to come.”

But like most residents of the Iraqi capital, Adel insists he will not allow the approach of war to spoil the traditional five-day festivities for the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

“We’re not in the habit of missing the great feast days of our religion and in any case it gives us some respite,” he says.

For his neighbour Haitham Hanna, the holiday is not just an important tradition, but also the busiest period of the year for his cake-making business.

His concern is not so much the fact of war, but its timing - any increase in war jitters could spark a sharp fall-off in orders from the provinces, threatening his fragile livelihood.

“We’re not afraid of a U.S. strike,” he insists, with half an eye on the fact that he is talking to one of the army of correspondents for the international media who have descended on the Iraqi capital.

Hanna’s fears of fresh economic woes are very real in a country which has already seen the purchasing power of its middle classes decimated by U.N. sanctions in force since Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Before the start of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980 ushered in more than two decades on a constant war footing, the dinar was worth three U.S. dollars and well-to-do Iraqis were frequent visitors to the department stores and casinos of European capitals.

But this week the dinar was changing hands at 2,080 to the dollar, leaving moneychangers to measure wads, rather than count the depreciated currency.

“Life is expensive, it’s true,” says Hikmet Sidli, a 41-year-old civil servant, who like other public employees has seen his standard of living plummet.

But he insists he will not let his family go without as he tours the capital's Karrada shopping district with his wife and young daughter looking for new clothes for his family.

“God willing, our children will have their new clothes and our family will celebrate Eid al-Fitr as tradition dictates,” he says.

Shopkeepers say that to their surprise Sidli’s sense of defiance has been shared by most Baghdadis this year, keeping the tills ringing in the run-up to the holiday.

Standing behind a display case of perfumes, Abdelrazaq Hassan, 28, acknowledges that he had expected sales to fall sharply this Ramadan amid the mounting war fever.

“But despite all the rumpus in the media, Iraqis have responded with true sang froid. Their attitude is, let’s celebrate Eid first and worry about tomorrow when it comes,” he says.  

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