Can Someone Check On Abdul Aziz? by Bibi B.
1200 words, ~6 minutes reading time
Issue 7 (Spring 2025)
Who doesn’t love a fun Muslim romance series, doused in comedy that will be appreciated by anyone who’s ever saved their paramour’s number under a less conspicuous phone contact? Crashing Eid is a four-part limited series that follows strong-willed Saudi-national Rezan, her teen daughter Lamar, and Sameer, the British-Pakistani man that Rezan has just proposed to after two years of chaperoned (and therefor halal!) dating. Within the first scene of the series, there are already several challenges to tradition; Rezan is over thirty, a divorcee, a single mother, unveiled, and most importantly, proposing to her boyfriend! Immediately the series establishes the emergence of a modern, practicing Muslim woman who shapes her own relationship to man.
The series explores an Islamo-feminist ideal, challenging patriarchal ideas of victim-blaming and morality testing through its sympathetic female protagonist. Rezan faces resistance towards cultural growth by each of her family members; she navigates it all with an imperfect but deeply affectionate nuance. Her daughter, Lamaar, crafts a place within the culture that respects her womanhood and agency, confronting her abusive and entitled father’s hypocritical orthodoxy with an appeal to accept her as she is, creating the foundation for a healthier connection. Rezan’s brother, Sofiyan, realizes that the casual acceptance of male violence his patriarchal culture bred is harming him directly, when his ex-wife restricts child-visitation by falsely claiming he raised hands on them. Mother Mona, who has spent her whole life blaming Rezan for the misery that adherence to an oppressive tradition left her in, is able to finally stand in solidarity with her daughter against it.
Time and time again the series asserts that being a modern woman is not mutually exclusive from being a Muslim woman, and it does a convincing job! It does a less convincing job of challenging racism in the Saudi community, even if it is a step in the right direction. I guess.
Many ancient cultures are going through a phase of uncertainty, stretching awkwardly to meet their people’s new needs; the series creates an environment to match, with the gravitas of its holy Ramadan setting grounded in the silliness of last-minute Eid scramble and romantic shenanigans. The common thread linking all of Crashing Eid’s situational comedy is the fact that Sameer is ethnically Pakistani, a huge flaw on his part which throws a wrench in Rezan’s plan to marry him. Racism is sprinkled into the series from an incredulous taxi driver that can’t believe Sameer is on his way to marry a Saudi woman, to Rezan’s father assuming Sameer was a foreign labourer, all the way to Eid dinner, where his mere presence as a Pakistani man in a Saudi dining room is too offensive for Mona’s guests. His identity is treated clumsily by the writers, as if only existing to propel the transformation taking place in Rezan’s life.
There are poignant moments in this otherwise comedic series that handle heavier themes with a dignified transparency, most notably in each time photographic evidence of familial abuse against Rezan is seen by Lamaar and Mona, who reflect on their own impact as unwitting agents of cultural patriarchy. Sometimes, we need to see the viscera of oppression to wake us from our stupor, and Crashing Eid rewards women when they finally relinquish adherence to their outdated and cruel victim-blaming. Unfortunately, this same attention is never offered to hierarchies of race or wealth, and any exploration of these themes falls flat.
My faith in Crashing Eid’s ability to tactfully navigate anything other than the feminist angle on power and its intersections vanished by episode 3; our titular protagonist has the absolutely unhinged idea to pack what remains of a picked-over restaurant meal for Abdul Aziz, her Saudi family’s Pakistani house help. Sameer is rightfully appalled. Both Rezan and Sameer challenge conservative family members as they create space for their individual identities, and their self-respect within evolving cultures of faith. Rezan’s struggles against oppression are not taken lightly, and the forces using tradition, religion, and gender to control her are rightfully critiqued. Why couldn’t the same be offered to Sameer’s experiences with racism in Saudi? Why is Rezan never punished for her generalizations, microaggressions and unwillingness to engage in self-reflection, the way Mona was?
Of course, it’s because Sameer wields a tool that allows him to ascend race in this narrative: wealth! We look to the only other named Pakistani character in the show, the hired help, Abdul Aziz. We learn that his name is actually Sofiyan, a moniker taken from him because there is already a Saudi Sofiyan in the household. He is rebranded Abdul Aziz, which translates directly to “servant of the giver.” Rezan’s racist behaviour parallels her mother’s sexist behaviour nearly identically; both projecting their own grief and insecurity onto someone they are harming, doubling down on self-victimhood when confronted. But unlike his future wife, Sameer’s insistence on standing in solidarity with a fellow oppressed kin is treated like an obstacle to true love by the plot.
The inconvenience of being Pakistani is washed away by Sameer being a British-passport-holding, Arabic-speaking man of wealth. Throughout the series we watch as a sympathetic portrait is painted of Pakistani Sofiyan, who keeps setting up a chair for himself to relax in outside the property walls of his workplace, destined to be disturbed by employer requests so frequently it’s comedic. By the end of the series, we get another shot of Sofiyan/Abdul Aziz on his chair at the property gates, getting up to help the recently-engaged Rezan and Sameer load suitcases into their departure vehicle as they head back to Britain. Sameer pats him on the shoulder and lets him do the heavy lifting as the camera pans out to watch them drive off, the others going back to their regular lives. Pakistani Sofiyan’s blurry chair in the background sits empty once again, fading to black as famous Nancy Ajram song Ya Ghali plays.
You who is precious to me
What has happened to you, my love?
You've learnt to be cruel, you don't ever ask about me
You've forgotten me, abandoned me, you have no thoughts towards my feelings
I don't come across your mind
It feels too deliberate a choice of song considering the plot, as it has a well known Hindi cover by Zubeen Garg, Ya Ali. There is something to be said about a Saudi team of writers and producers invoking an Indian Bollywood reference, when Sameer’s journey is of a Pakistani man facing racism that treats South-Asia as an unworthy, lesser monolith, but I’ve talked too much already. I’ll leave you with the Hindi translation instead:
Oh God, my beloved is my life
I’ll erase and sacrifice my pride for my love
I’ll erase and sacrifice my existence for my love
Oh God, have pity on me,
Oh God, everyone sacrifices for their lover
Oh God, please help me
Oh God, my beloved is my life.
Crashing Eid explores what it means to be a modern Muslim woman, with its cozy depiction of trial and error, as a traditional family reckons with unfamiliar modernity when their black sheep comes home as a catalyst. What it fails to catalyse however, is meaningful criticism of racial or class hierarchy, leaving the audience unsatisfied and diminishing the overall impact of its feminist message.
