A Bloody Great Festival!

By dinnertime yesterday I'd helped slaughter two sheep and skin and gut three. I'd also prepared and ate "shwa" -barbecue - with the liver, lungs, and fat of the sheep we slaughtered. Is the title of this blog entry starting to make sense?

Jiull Ian (my Romanian roommate) and I headed to Temara Tuesday night to participate in the Eid al-Adha preparations with my Moroccan family. We went out and bought all the utensils for the slaughtering, skinning, gutting, butchering, and cooking of the sheep, including: knives, skewers, grill racks, cutting boards, spices, and an axe. It seemed the whole town had the same idea, and the streets were full of vendors with all the essentials for the Eid and shoppers with all the essentials for buying these essentials. When we had bought all we needed, we headed home to eat dinner. The intense night activity reminded me of Ramadan when everybody was out socializing and feasting until 4am because of daytime fasting. I was beginning to see the importance of Eid al-Adha for Muslims, but its significance was hammered home when Khalid, one of my brothers in my Moroccan family, refused to eat very much dinner so as to have as much room as possible for the feast the next day. I laughed when he explained why he had stopped eating, but I quickly realized he was serious. Wow, I was anxious for the ceremony to begin.

My Moroccan family and Jull Ian (bottom right) eating tajine Tuesday night before Eid. Everyone scrunched around a little table...what a way to share a meal! Khalid is the one putting food into his mouth. This was probably his last bite before leaving the table to save the maximum amount of room for the next day.

As we approached the family's house, this is the scene we encountered. Everybody was burning the heads of the sheep they had just slaughtered.

Jull Ian and I went back with Abdessamad to his house and were up until 3:30am, goofing off and generally enjoying the feeling of anticipation before the huge event. Because of this, we overslept and missed the slaughtering of the first sheep, so we arrived to a bloody, headless mess. In good-ole Moroccan fashion I jumped right in with a knife and started hacking away at the skin of the beast (actually I was watched carefully and criticized often for bad or unnecessary cuts, but I sure learned fast!).

And this is the scene I walked in on when I arrived to my family's house after waking up late at Abdessamad's.

So I joined right in!

Khalid and a friend taking off the horns.

After slaughtering and cleaning the family's sheep, we went to Abdessamad's to slaughter his two sheep. Voici les photos:

Abdessamad's sheep.

Haziza (Abdessamad's sister-in-law) and her husband Mbark horsing around on the sheep.

A man with special religious significance (and talent with a knife) came to do the actual slaughtering. He came, we held down the sheep, he cut the throat, and he left, quite literally that fast.

You eat meat? Well here's the first step in it arriving to your plate!

Hassan, Abdessamad's brother, began gutting the sheep, taking out first the fat that would be used for barbecue and other dishes, then the stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, and lungs. We ate all of that, by the way, except the intestines. And I liked all of it! Maybe it was the delicious fat and spices that made these new foods so tasty, but I think the fact that I took part in the entire process of the food arriving on my plate had a lot to do with it as well. (Oh yeah, look at all the blood splattered on the wall in the background. That is due to the sheep kicking out the last of its life and kicking with this all the blood that had been liberated from its imprisoning veins.)

The experience of eating food for which I personally partook in all the processes for preparing was immensely more meaningful than when I have bought meat from the store and cooked it. To know exactly where my meal came from was to be completely responsible for how I treat my body and how I treat the animals that supply the nutrition my body demands. In Spanish and French there are two verbs for the English "to know." One is used when referring to the recollection of information or knowledge of skills. The other is used for things you are familiar with from personal experience. It is this connotation I wish to use when I refer to knowing where my food came from. I knew the sheep, I helped kill, skin, gut, butcher, skewer, and cook its meat, and when I ate it I felt all the work, effort, and emotion that had gone into that bite of delicious energy. I'm no writer, and I'm certainly no wordsmith, but am I conveying how divine this experience was for someone who has grown up so far removed from his food?

The day of the Eid (Wednesday) I spent mostly killing, skinning and gutting sheep. I helped prepare the lungs and liver, which we wrapped in fat and barbecued to perfection, and this was our lunch (at about 3pm, our first meal of the day.) We devoured it, and afterwards Mbark and I took a little nap. Killin' aint easy, and we needed rest. We sat around with the family relaxing and chatting, and later we had a special dinner that consisted of the head of the sheep. Let me tell you, the tongue is especially delicious! The cheek and nose aren't bad, either. (Please forgive me for not posting any more pictures of the best part, the food. I haven't yet found batteries that work for more than about 15 pictures in my camera, but Mbark did get a lot of pictures of the rest of the event, so as soon as I get those from him I'll post them!)

The next day (today) I spent 75% of the waking hours eating, or stuffing my face as they say here. I ate three meals first with my Moroccan family before going to visit their other family members and eating more. I don't even remember now how many times I ate - I just know it was more than I've ever eaten in one day in my life. Moroccans sure have a way of treating guests, especially foreigners. Every house I visited I was offered food and drink. In fact, it's almost unheard of for a guest to come over and not be served at least tea (even if it's close family.) You'd think the least healthy people in Morocco would be those with the most friends, or at least those who visit their friends the most. Darn these good looks! (or more like "darn these people's loving character and hospitality for foreigners!")

Much of the last 2.5 days I spent away from Abdessamad and Jull Ian, who stayed at Abdessamad's house while I was with the family at their house. Therefore I either spoke in Arabic or just shut up and listened, because only two people in the family speak French. However, the fact that a lot of my time was spent just sitting and listening and not partaking or even knowing what was going on or being said doesn't mean I didn't thoroughly enjoy myself. In fact, it's the most comfortable and content I've felt yet in Morocco. That can't make since to a normal person, but maybe that's why it makes so much since to me - I reckon I aren't normal! When I'm with this family, I know I'm with people who love me, who accept me as a family member, and whom I can trust with my life - So who needs verbal communication to be at ease and comfortable amidst such folks? We did often engage each other in conversation, however, but, as always, it was so rough that we mostly ended up laughing at my confusion and forgetting the original purpose of the conversation. This is the kind of language practice I need. This is the cultural experience I hunger for. What an awesome two and a half days!