Last week, Muslims around the world celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr after a month of fasting. On the eve of Eid, many people hold moon-sighting or “Chaand Raat” festivals around the world.
My family and I don’t normally celebrate Chaand Raat, but every other year or so we visit the Chaand Raat festival in Brooklyn’s Little Pakistan, my first home’s neighborhood, on Coney Island Avenue, to take in some of the sights and sounds of our people and our pind. This year I wanted to capture it all through video. No other sound resonated with all the clamor and glamour I saw that night more than Big Sean’s “Blessings,” and I decided to use it for this video. Way up, we’re blessed.
* * *
Sania Noreen Ahmed is a Brooklyn native and currently a grad student at Columbia University in the Human Rights Studies program. Outside of school and work, she is a visual artist and a filmmaker in the making.
