When and how does a new year begin?

One of the most important questions at the end of the year in Europe seems to be, where you celebrate with whom New Years, while wearing what and shooting how many christmas crackers in the air.

In Pakistan there are no dirty streets caused by new year's fire crackers, no drunken party guests stumbling over the left overs of yesterday's party: the islamic year has begun two weeks earlier, is regulated by the moon and not even a great cause of joy and partying: it is Muharram

In the first ten days of Muharram, the shiits are celebrating one of their biggest mourning festivities, the ashura rites, in which they remember the death of imam Al Husain in the battle of Kerbela.

I went for these celebrations to Lahore, the border city to India, where huge processions of people walked through the streets, chanting songs and cutting themselves with knives. With hurting themselves they demonstrate their belief and support for imam Husain and show the suffering he went through aswell. What seems strange to outsiders and even to Sunnis (the other main sect in Islam), is of essential base in the Shia belief. It reminded me of the self flagellation in the christian belief, which was mainly practiced in the 16^th century for getting rid of the worldly demands.

We watched it from above, sitting on the roof top of a house and were invited afterwards for some food and a chai by the people who had let us on the roof top of the houses. The festivity was filmed and observed closely as the days of Muharram seem to be riot prone or sectarian violence. Sad enough that a bomb, detonating in Karachi on the Muharram festivity, triggered such sectarian violence.

Our visit to Lahore, aswell as the New Years Evening in Islamabad stayed calm. No fire crackers, no acted or true violence. Two old and two new years. And more to come.