Eid in Washington Square Park

Just like every other year, Muslims from all across the city commuted to Washington Square Park this past March to pray together. As I captured these scenes with my camera this March, I reflected on my sense of belonging.

In March 2026, New York marked its first Eid-ul-Fitr with a Muslim mayor. As in every year before it, Muslims came in from across the five boroughs to Washington Square Park to pray shoulder to shoulder.

They came on the A train from Jamaica and the 7 from Jackson Heights, from Bay Ridge and Parkchester and Staten Island, carrying prayer mats rolled under their arms and children on their shoulders. The park, usually given over to chess players, buskers, and NYU students, rearranged itself around a different kind of order. Rows formed beneath the arch, strangers stood close enough to touch. For the length of the prayer, the city’s usual noise seemed to recede, replaced by the rise and fall of the imam’s voice and the rustle of hundreds of bodies bowing at once.

I was inside it and observing it at once. My forehead touched the ground with everyone else’s, but still some part of me stood at the edge of the crowd, observing. I was measuring my own place in the ummah.

When the prayer ended, the rows broke apart into embraces and greetings of Eid Mubarak, into families posing for photos against the arch and vendors appearing with the usual. The park returned, slowly, to being a park. But for some of us that Friday morning, it was a masjid with an open sky.