Barat: The holiday we didn’t know about

August 9, 2009 at 7:28 pm (Failing, Hilarious, N Iraq)

On Wednesday night, Ashley and I were in the kitchen, chilling, eating dinner, when we hear these loud pops. These are not uncommon. The kids in the neighborhood have these “firework” type things, that pop when you throw them on the ground. They had been especially popular the past week or so, since we had a giant firework display, complements the PUK, since they won the election. 

However, the kids got a little ambitious, and started throwing them at the house. Wouldn’t have been too big of a deal, however, these things are LOUD. So, I go outside, tell them to stop. Do they? No. But, not all of them now are aimed at the house, some are back in the street where they belong. 

An hour or so later, Josh comes in and asks us if we knew it was halloween. We didn’t. Apparently, it was a holiday that they celebrate 2 weeks before the beginning of Ramadan, and they call this holiday, Barat. Basically, all the kids go door to door and get candy. 

We didn’t know.

Then, our neighbor friend that comes in “unexpectantly” all the time, Baveal, comes in, “hello!”, he shouts, with his hair all spiked up. We give him some pixie sticks, and then realize we are going to need more candy. 

So we race to the corner dukan,  and get a container of candy and then grab the stools and sit our side. And wait. We must have looked so funny because we were so excited to join in on the fun…excitedly waiting for a kid to come by. Maybe too excited. 

Anyways, we start to see kids come by, and so we give out candy to everyone we see, which wasn’t too many. We were a little late in joining the fun. (That’s why the kids were throwing the things at our house.)

It was a cool night through, because after the festivities ended, we hung out with the neighborhood kids for a while, playing games, singing songs, playing tag. And they definitely got more candy than anyone else, because we had so much left over.  

Oh, well. Such was the holiday that we didn’t know about, but tried to celebrate anyway. 🙂