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CNN Live Sunday

Afghans Celebrate a Truly Joyous Ramadan

Aired December 16, 2001 - 15:41   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Despite the bombings and the gun battles, Afghanistan's cities and villages have began celebrating. In Kabul, recent events are bringing an even greater significance to the end of the Ramadan holy month. CNN's Harris Whitbeck takes us there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Kabul lights up with tracer fire, gunshots piercing its night sky. These guns, however, are not being fired in anger, but in happiness.

Prayers also are heard, signaling the end of the holy month of Ramadan and the beginning of Ead (ph), the three-day feast that this year seems truly joyous.

Prayer services continued throughout the morning, and Midiyan Zavisiar (ph) is there with his brother Makuza (ph).

(UNINTELLIGIBLE) old friends, some of them back from Pakistan to where they had fled during the Taliban regime. Midiyan (ph) invites his friends to the family home where a feast is laid out, and where talk is of the changes taking place in their country.

"This year, we can celebrate with true happiness," he says, "the Taliban has gone, and with it all of the restrictions we were forced to endure."

Midiyan's (ph) father Abdullah (ph) agrees.

"(UNINTELLIGIBLE) is required to celebrate a feast," he says. "Before, we were not in the right frame of mind to celebrate."

So, we all share a meal listening to the music and the television that last year were banned. The boys dreaming of going back to school and getting proper jobs. Their father is contemplating an Afghanistan freed of the strict impositions of the recent past.

Across the way, we were invited to another feast, where women also spoke excitedly of the changes sweeping their country. Favia (ph) and her mother no longer wear their burkahs in the presence of men they don't know. As they share tea and sweets, they too say this year's celebration is very different from the past.

"We are all very happy," she says. "As women, we can now live in freedom. Soon, we will be able to work again, and no longer be locked away in a corner of the house."

They all say they expect the celebration of the next Ead (ph), a year from now, will be even better.

Harris Whitbeck, CNN, Kabul, Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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