Normally on Eid morning, after an entire month of exhausting dawn-to-sunset fasting for Ramadan, my family is rushing to get ready and make it to the morning prayer with thousands of other Muslims in St. Louis.
But this year, no one was ironing fancy clothes, and I felt more salty than celebratory. Our college-age daughter could not come home to celebrate with us because of impending finals. I had known that this first Eid al-Fitr without her was going to be hard for me.
But then the College Board made it even worse.
Our son, a junior in high school, had to take two Advanced Placement exams on Eid. These determine whether a student can earn college credit for taking rigorous courses in high school. The College Board administers the exams, scheduling them by subject on various dates in May. There is an option to take a makeup exam later for a valid reason, such as illness or a religious holiday, but it's an entirely different test. (Rumor has it, on the college prep sites, that the makeup test is a harder exam to discourage students from missing the original test date.) In my son's case, the makeup date would have been in the middle of his finals week at school.
Scheduling an AP exam on Eid was an incredibly insensitive decision by the College Board, especially at a time when large school districts around the country -- from Mehlville, Missouri, to Houston -- are deciding to make Eid an official holiday starting next year. Many Muslim high school students don't have a choice about whether to take an absence from school for Eid this year because of these AP tests.
Growing up as a religious minority in America means having to miss a day of work, or a critical exam, in order to observe the biggest religious holiday in your faith. I asked a practicing Christian friend how she would feel if her child had to take AP exams on Christmas Day.
"Fox News would be all over it, and a new holy war against the schools would ensue," she messaged.
It would be unfathomable for American Christians to wake up on Christmas morning and send their kids off to take high-stakes tests all day instead of attending a service, opening presents and spending time with their families. Even in Muslim-majority countries where Christians are a minority, the winter holidays ensure that no student attends school on Christmas Day.
It's tough for families to celebrate a holiday when society insists on "business as usual."
"It's not even going to feel like Eid this year," I told my husband in the days leading up to the holiday. He agreed. He got dressed in his usual work clothes so he could stop in at the hospital for work after the morning prayer.
On Eid, I texted my daughter to call me as soon as she woke up, which she did. She attended a community celebration with a family friend of ours, and her school's Muslim Student Association hosted an Eid dinner that evening.
It made me feel better that she got to celebrate with her community. I made her promise to send me photos.
As for my son, when he came downstairs for breakfast that day, he was wearing the traditional Pakistani kameez shalwar with its long, flowing tunic. I would never have had the courage to wear something so ethnic to my predominately white, Christian high school in the '90s.
He decided to wear the outfit to his exams to carry the spirit of Eid with him. He ate breakfast while reviewing notes for the test.
The sight of him making the best of a bad situation filled my heart with joy.
I decided that I would follow my kids' lead and set aside my bitterness about the circumstances keeping me apart from them.
Eid Mubarak, my friends.