As the last echoes of Eid faded across the Muslim world, Gaza remained shackled to a nightmare. A pall of gloom, despair and despondency smothered what should have been a celebration of joy, exuberance and excitement. The air, thick with smoke and grief, still trembles with the echoes of airstrikes and sniper fire. Mothers clutch the remnants of shattered bodies; fathers dig through rubble for traces of life. What should have been days of laughter and feasting became a dirge – a cruel juxtaposition to the kaleidoscopes of joy unfolding elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Here, Eid’s rituals lie buried beneath debris, its sweetness replaced by the metallic tang of blood. Gaza, a live prison, counts breaths between bombardments, its people surviving on frayed threads of hope. To live here is to exist in a slaughterhouse where death follows like a shadow; where securing a loaf of bread or a drop of water becomes a gamble with fate. Every morning, they wake up to corpses and screams, with scores of injured lying unattended on shattered hospitals floor, waiting for painful deaths.

Elsewhere, Eid unfolded in kaleidoscopes of joy and excitement. Children clasped Eid gifts, swung in sunlit gardens and demanded their favorite dishes with innocent........

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