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.
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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
Filipinos master disaster readiness, one roll of the dice at a time
- In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon
MANILA: In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon.
The teenagers huddled around the table leap into action, shouting instructions and acting out the correct strategies for just one of the potential catastrophes laid out in the board game called Master of Disaster.
With fewer than half of Filipinos estimated to have undertaken disaster drills or to own a first-aid kit, the game aims to boost lagging preparedness in a country ranked the most disaster-prone on earth for four years running.
“(It) features disasters we’ve been experiencing in real life for the past few months and years,” 17-year-old Ansherina Agasen told AFP, noting that flooding routinely upends life in her hometown of Valenzuela, north of Manila.
Sitting in the arc of intense seismic activity called the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” the Philippines endures daily earthquakes and is hit by an average of 20 typhoons each year.
In November, back-to-back typhoons drove flooding that killed nearly 300 people in the archipelago nation, while a 6.9-magnitude quake in late September toppled buildings and killed 79 people around the city of Cebu.
“We realized that a lot of loss of lives and destruction of property could have been avoided if people knew about basic concepts related to disaster preparedness,” Francis Macatulad, one of the game’s developers, told AFP of its inception.
The Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST), where Macatulad heads business development, first dreamt up the game in 2013, after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines and left thousands dead.
Launched six years later, Master of Disaster has been updated this year to address more events exacerbated by human-driven climate change, such as landslides, drought and heatwaves.
More than 10,000 editions of the game, aimed at players as young as nine years old, have been distributed across the archipelago nation.
“The youth are very essential in creating this disaster resiliency mindset,” Macatulad said.
‘Keeps on getting worse’
While the Philippines has introduced disaster readiness training into its K-12 curriculum, Master of Disaster is providing a jolt of innovation, Bianca Canlas of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) told AFP.
“It’s important that it’s tactile, something that can be touched and can be seen by the eyes of the youth so they can have engagement with each other,” she said of the game.
Players roll a dice to move their pawns across the board, with each landing spot corresponding to cards containing questions or instructions to act out disaster-specific responses.
When a player is unable to fulfil a task, another can “save” them and receive a “hero token” — tallied at the end to determine a winner.
At least 27,500 deaths and economic losses of $35 billion have been attributed to extreme weather events in the past two decades, according to the 2026 Climate Risk Index.
“It just keeps on getting worse,” Canlas said, noting the lives lost in recent months.
The government is now determining if it will throw its weight behind the distribution of the game, with the sessions in Valenzuela City serving as a pilot to assess whether players find it engaging and informative.
While conceding the evidence was so far anecdotal, ASSIST’s Macatulad said he believed the game was bringing a “significant” improvement in its players’ disaster preparedness knowledge.
“Disaster is not picky. It affects from north to south. So we would like to expand this further,” Macatulad said, adding that poor communities “most vulnerable to the effects of climate change” were the priority.
“Disasters can happen to anyone,” Agasen, the teen, told AFP as the game broke up.
“As a young person, I can share the knowledge I’ve gained... with my classmates at school, with people at home, and those I’ll meet in the future.”
