“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go and not be questioned.” — Maya Angelou

There is a version of me, somewhere in the past, who could not sleep the night before Eid.

She would be lying on a thin mattress in her grandmother’s house, listening to the sounds of the kitchen that never stopped. The clanking of pots. The low hum of conversation between aunties who had been cooking since afternoon and showed no signs of slowing down. The smell of rendang, thick and rich, creeping through every corner of the house. Ketupat wrapped and ready in neat little rows. The whole house breathing with life.

That little girl had her new clothes folded carefully beside her pillow. She had already planned which relatives she would visit first, not because she loved them the most, but because they gave the best green packets. She would do the math in her head. If my uncle gives this much, and that aunty gives that much, she could afford the ice cream from the man on the motorbike who always parked near the mosque after prayers.

Eid was magic. It was the one day the world felt completely, unapologetically warm.

I don’t know exactly when that warmth started to fade. It didn’t happen all at once. It was slow, like a candle burning down so gently you don’t notice until you’re sitting in the dark.

Losing my parents changed everything.

When they were here, the house had a centre. A gravity. No matter how far I had gone, no matter how many years I spent abroad, there was always a place that pulled me back. My mother’s kitchen was that place. The chaos of preparation on Eid eve, the way she moved between five dishes at once like she had done it a thousand times (because she had), the way my father would sit quietly in the corner, pretending he wasn’t sneaking bites before everything was ready.

That centre is gone now. The house still stands. But it is cold. There is no smell of rendang. There is no busy kitchen. There is no one calling my name to come help wrap the ketupat.

Silence fills the spaces where laughter used to live.

And then there is the part nobody talks about.

The older you get, the more you realise that not everyone shows up on Eid to see you. Some people show up to see what you can give them.

The last time I went home for Eid was two years ago. I remember walking through the door, tired from the journey, hoping someone would ask me how I was. How life had been. Whether I was okay.

Instead, the first thing I heard was, “Mana THR nya, Cha? Buat si ini, buat si itu.”

Not “How are you?”

Not “We missed you.”

Just… where is the money.

I stood there and something inside me quietly broke. Not dramatically. Not with tears or confrontation. Just a quiet crack, like a glass that’s been holding too much weight for too long.

I looked around and saw it clearly for the first time. The “maaf lahir dan batin” that people exchanged without looking each other in the eye. The forgiveness asked out of tradition, not out of meaning. The rituals are performed because they’ve always been performed, not because anyone still feels them.

Eid had become a performance. And I was tired of playing my part.

So I stopped going home.

It sounds harsh when I say it like that. Maybe it is. But sometimes protecting your peace means walking away from things the world tells you that you should hold onto. Even traditions. Even family gatherings. Even Eid.

This year, I am in Tokyo with my husband. Just the two of us. No big family gathering. No long table filled with dishes I didn’t help cook. No envelopes stuffed with money for people who see me as nothing more than an ATM berjalan, a walking cash machine with feelings they never bother to check on.

Just us. Looking after ourselves. And honestly? It is the most peaceful Eid I have had in years.

But I want to be honest about something else too. It is not all loss.

There are people in my life, friends and a handful of relatives, who have never once made me feel like a transaction. People who call me on Eid not to ask for anything, but just to say they are thinking of me. People who remember that behind the career and the success and the life abroad, there is still that little girl who just wanted to feel the warmth.

To those people: thank you. You probably don’t know how much it means. But on days like today, when the world celebrates togetherness, and I am thousands of miles from where I grew up, your genuine warmth is what reminds me that Eid can still mean something.

It just means something different now.

It is no longer about new clothes and green packets and the ice cream man by the mosque. It is about choosing who deserves your energy. It is about understanding that family is not always blood, and blood is not always family. It is about learning, painfully and slowly, that you are allowed to redefine what celebration looks like for you.

Even if it looks like a quiet morning in Tokyo. Even if it looks like just two people, choosing peace over pretense.

That is enough. That is more than enough.

Eid Mubarak, wherever you are and however you are spending it today. I hope your Eid is still warm. I hope it is still meaningful. And if, like me, you have lost some of that warmth along the way, I hope you find it again in the places and people you least expect.

You deserve an Eid that feels like home, even if home looks nothing like it used to.

Happy Eid. 🌙

Love – EG