Wed, Nov 17, 2010.

Mabrouk L3id! Today is the day, many sheep die. I went for a run at 7 and returned an hour later to hear loud prayer chants resonating across the commune, announcing this holy day of the Great Feast. I hurried to be at Naima’s house by 9am, in time for the sacrifice. I found Naima, her mother, and her older sisters at home with the children. They were still in their pajamas, busily at work in the kitchen. I sat and joined them for tea and cookies while the men made their way back from the Mosque. Fatima was making pan bread. She’s the quietest of the sisters. She sat in a corner of the kitchen pretty much all day. Batoul and Naima talk so much it’s surprising to see their sister is so different. Malika is the workhorse among the sisters. She’s always cleaning and getting her hands dirty. She has two children, Jalila and FtaH. There were 3 of Naima’s brothers at the house. One of them I frequently see on his motorcycle around town. The two others are from Agadir. One has an adorable 4-year old girl named Hiba, and his wife is 8-months pregnant. The other brother is father to a gangly and sweet little 10 year old girl named Acima, a 12 year old boy who always hangs around FtaH, and a new baby boy named Rbi3. The grandfather of the family is Ahmed, husband of Rkoush. Together, they make an adorable family.
After the men had their breakfast, they prepared the courtyard for the sacrifice. The oldest nephew helped the three brothers and their father with the huge task. They had 3 sheep to kill, skin, and cut up. One of the rams, the first to be sacrificed, was one of the biggest sheep I’ve ever seen. He was about the size of a Shetland pony: Tall, strong, and majestic. He had large curled horns on his proud head. As I sat in the kitchen chatting with Batoul and cooing over little Rabi3, I saw one of the brothers in his black hooded cloak pulling the beast past the doorway. Another smaller ram lay tied against the wall, braying. The women said they don’t usually watch the sacrifice, so before I knew it, FtaH ran in to fetch my camera and take photos. I hurried out to watch. They’d already slit the throat of the biggest ram. He lay with his head barely attached, as a pool of bright red blood covered a large part of the courtyard. They were bleeding him. He was still alive and kicking. At one point, his body heaved as if the animal was taking a deep breath, and his severed esophagus made a gurgling sound. The nerves to his brain were also severed, so I kept reminding myself the animal couldn’t feel anything. His legs kicked violently as blood continued to squirt out of his neck.
The women kept calling me inside to have more tea and pancakes. I finally went in but later witnessed the second sacrifice. Now that there were two dead sheep in the courtyard, there was much work to be done. Malika and Naima helped sweep all the blood down the drain. The men hung up the sheep and skinned them after blowing air through a hole in its leg so the skin would detach more easily. They handed the women the organs to clean up. The liver and heart were brought to the kitchen to be boiled as they cleaned the stomach and intestines of all their contents and removed the lining of stomach fat. Later, the boiled liver was cut up into squares, wrapped in fat, and skewered for a noontime barbecue. Every house in Morocco was doing the same thing; preparing a lunch of organ and stomach fat kebabs. The first kebabs were brought to me to eat sprinkled with salt and cumin, wrapped in bread. I was uneasy about eating sheep liver but I had to try it. It didn’t taste too bad. The stomach fat didn’t go down as easy, but I swallowed it all slowly, getting away with eating just one.
Afterwards, as everyone busied themselves with cooking kebabs or cleaning all the organs, blood and bits of sheep, I ran home to grab hydrocortisone cream for Acima, who’d developed hives from new clothes purchased especially for the celebration. I ran into my neighbor the Haj on my way back out the door. He asked me to come say hello and have a kebab. I decided to accept his invitation despite some previous electricity pirating issues in the past. They are my new neighbors after all. They’d moved in to the new house the day before. The walls are all unpainted and some were missing the last coat of cement, but otherwise it’s looking good. He gave me a little tour and took me to the kitchen where his sister and wife were cooking kebabs. This family had sacrificed a smaller sheep and a goat. Goats have less cholesterol, so some families kill a smaller sheep plus a goat for those with cholesterol problems. We all ate a kebab together while the Haj’s two young children giggled excitedly and played peek-a-boo with me. Before long I thanked them and excused myself from the awkward silences, as Acima was waiting for my hydrocortisone cream. I went back to Naima’s, put the cream on her niece, and sat in the living room with the women a while before continuing to Malika’s house in early evening. She was boiling sheep meat in the kitchen while Larbi was cleaning up the last of the entrails of their sheep on the roof. They insisted I stay for dinner: a platter of steamed meat served with salt, cumin, and bread on the side. I ate a couple mouthfuls and announced that I was “meated-out” and getting heartburn from all the sheep. It wasn’t a lie. They know of my aversion to meat so they didn’t push it. We sat together a while chatting. Larbi told me this year was special because he’d been given en entire five days off work at the mine for the Eid. I joked that he’d better spend it eating sheep to fuel his frail body for the remainder of the year working non-stop.
At 8:30, Malika and I joined Naima and her nieces to go watch the musicians in the village center. We sat in the street among a gaggle of women and girls waiting for the music as the Boujloud and Tamashut ran around terrorizing youths. There were 3 Boujlouds and several Tamashuts. The Boujlouds dress in goat skins, covered head to toe in it. Every time they passed by, the unmistakable billy goat stench wafted in my face. I wouldn’t make it 5 minutes in those costumes. These young men spend an entire day running around the village making grunting noises and chasing people with sticks. From my understanding, the Tamashuts are supposed to resemble cats. They paint their skin black and stick cotton balls on their faces. They look more like they’ve been tarred and feathered. Naima explained that each day of the Eid, a different group of boys dress up in the costumes. The stronger, older boys are Boujlouds and the younger, weaker ones are tamashuts because the costume isn’t as constricting. Their aim is to drive out evil spirits from the village. They run around smacking people with sticks until they give them a dirham. I was smacked a couple of times.
The music began at 10pm or so and lasted a few hours. Young men and children entered the circle, shuffling and bouncing along with the Berber music. The girls and women remained seated and huddled on the outside, sporting their elegant new clothes and giggling secretively with their friends. Naima and I retired from the cold and hurried home to our beds by midnight. Thus ended my experience of this joyous Moroccan holiday.