Last Friday in Pakistan was unmistakably, irrevocably black — blindingly pitch dark.

Karachi could have been mistaken for New York, Lahore for San Francisco, Islamabad for Washington: there were massive traffic jams, crowds had gathered outside stores before they had opened their doors, every item on sale was belligerently fought over, and every bargain celebrated as if a battle had been won. Inside the stores were violence-inclined shoppers, elbowing, shoving, and harrying for the right size or design. E-stores crashed because they couldn’t handle the volume of business but the cash still flowed.

Black Friday had well and truly arrived in Pakistan.

As Jumma went black, citizens in the Land of the Pure knelt to the gods of a good bargain. Many sales later, they were reminded that Jumma can never be black

It had only been slightly visible last year when a smattering of retailers chose to latch on to the Western concept and announce sales that allowed them to clear out unsold stock. This year, though, every retailer worth his salt latched onto the bandwagon.

Much like the rest of the world, our high-street too has borrowed the ‘Black Friday’ term from the US. Thanksgiving was originally a harvest celebration in North America. In modern times, the tradition comes from the heavy Christmas shopping in the US that follows Thanksgiving — something that leads to more gridlocked traffic and cheque books turning ‘black’.

In Pakistan, we may not celebrate Thanksgiving (who cooks turkey here for dinner?!) but we do have celebratory sales at the end of November. These give most retailers the chance to get rid of unwanted spring, summer and mid-summer stocks before they bring in their latest winter offerings. Timed to coincide with American sales on their Thanksgiving, the Pakistani version is purely opportunistic.

But the Land of the Pure is a place of glorious dichotomies. We love our sales but we take offence to our sales being given a heathen name imported from evil, Trump-ridden America. How dare these infidel retailers label our holy Friday a morbid black? How could they scheme to earn more money at the cost of losing their identity? Don’t they realise they have already lost to other Western concepts like air-conditioned malls and credit-card machines?

Yep. A fight over colour coloured Black Friday sales in Pakistan.

Does this mean that if these retailers had chosen to call their Friday ‘white’ or a blingy ‘golden’ they could have celebrated all they like without being subjected to an onslaught?

A lot of pious (and clever) retailers immediately grasped this stream of thought. Mausummery and Zeen boasted ‘Blessed Friday’ sales. Origins had a ‘Mega-Weekend’ sale while shoe-brand WalkEaze opted for the no-nonsense, somewhat confusing ‘Friday Sale’, which extended for five days beyond Friday.

Outfitters and their sister-brand Ethnic by Outfitters declared the weekend to be all about ‘White Friday’, proceeding to elaborate with the hashtag ‘Because Friday is Never Black’. Gul Ahmed initiated its winter stock clearance sale on the same day.

Although these sales will go on for a month, the brand still instigated shopping frenzy on its opening day. The word-savvy Khaadi simply announced the ‘Great Khaadi Sale’, thereby avoiding the ire of their more conservative clientele.

Meanwhile, the high-street stores that turned an evil ‘black’ still managed to draw in crowds. There were long queues at the cash counters of Beech Tree which had declared a ‘Flat 30 percent off’ on new stocks. Al-Karam stores boasted perpetual shopping orgies where all stock was at a ‘Flat 50 percent off’. Theological considerations aside, who could resist bargains like that?

Unlike the West where Black Friday sales mostly hit electronic goods stores, there were no sales or discounts on electronic goods in the market here, but e-stores like Daraz and Yayvo offered a substantial discount on electronic items.

Not everyone went home lucky, mind you. The shoppers whose preferred purchases ran out of stock assuaged themselves by trooping back home and ranting on social media about the evils of a black Friday. Shopping Mubarak rather than Jumma Mubarak, you see. The religious high-horse is always such a comforting steed.

Notwithstanding some misguided angst, many are suspicious of how Black Friday sales have gone down in the past two years. Do shoppers really get great deals on Black Fridays? Truth be told, only sometimes.

There are genuine discounts and then there are stores who hike up their original prices and then magnanimously cut them down under the pretence of having a sale. Sometimes, you’d find premium electronic gadgets being sold at basement bargain rates but at other times, substandard or faulty versions that sell quickly but stop functioning a mere weeks following purchase.

It’s ironic that these particular issues were barely discussed during our Black Friday. We were far too busy obsessing over the weekend’s chosen hue. As a nation, we have a penchant for religious debates and this one fit the bill perfectly.

But as long as there’s a bona fide sale, does it matter what it’s called? As long as people are not conned en masse, what’s the point of discussing colour? Shopping aficionados certainly didn’t care as they rushed in to grab their favourite discounts regardless of what colour the sale was.

And besides, in the words of the legendary Michael Jackson, ‘It don’t matter if you’re black or white.’ It really don’t.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 4th, 2016