Eid el Kabir

First off, we’re back. After a three-week hiatus from the blog, we’re online again with a few new stories. The Sandes clan has departed, and Dar Noury, which echoed for two weeks with Lulu’s new Damien Rice CDs and chatter from all the bedrooms, seems cold and quiet and a bit lonely. A new acquaintance recently asked if we’d moved to Marrakech to escape for a while. In some ways, the answer is yes, at least to escape from our comfortable daily routine. What the holiday visit from Samuel’s family has taught us, however, is that you really can’t escape most things. “Wherever you go, there you are,” is an adage as true as it is damning. You can’t escape yourself.

But I digress.

Eid El Kebir, or “the big fete,” which was celebrated here in Marrakech on December 31st is another story of escape. Eid commemorates the New Year and the story of Abraham and his son, which is featured in both the Koran and the Bible. In it, Abraham is asked by God to show his love by sacrificing his son: Isaac in the Bible, Ismail in the Koran. We won’t dwell on the obvious question: What God would ever ask for such a sacrifice? Well, instead of killing his son, Abraham slaughters a sheep. Smart man. To celebrate Eid, every Muslim family buys and slaughters a ram. Several days of feasting and revelry follow.



Today’s story is one of logistics. Like I said, every Muslim family (or those with the means to buy a ram which costs about around $400, which represents several months’ wages for most Moroccans) partakes in this high-holiday tradition. Leading up to the day, the Medina has been teeming with just-purchased rams being taken to homes by every means imaginable – piled into donkey carts, draped over the shoulders’ of men, tethered to bicycles, and my personal favorite, “driven,” as if a wheelbarrow, with hind quarters held aloft by the proud, smiling owner. There are ram auctions at all of the supermarkets where the horned beasts are priced by the kilogram (usually between 38 and 45 dirhams/kilo). Along with the rams themselves are all of the necessary accoutrements. There are make-shift vendors selling onions, parsley and charcoal, which will be used to grill the rams’ heads on the first day of the fete. There are knife sharpening stations with enormous stone wheels grinding away at giant blades, the instrument used to slice the rams’ necks on Eid. Rubber boots and heavy plastic aprons are also on offer. Let’s not forget the realities of this endeavor; some might even remember an earlier post in which we described our plumber’s great pride in our drains. “When you slaughter your ram,” he explained, “these drains won’t clog [with blood] – guaranteed!” The easy extrapolation is that others, unfortunately, do. While the general tenor around Eid is excitement and pride, not to mention a great show of Muslim concern for those with fewer means since it is customary to share your ram with the homeless and those less fortunate, I cannot help but feel a small pang as we walk past groups of boys selling mounds of hay and oats in small plastic bags. The last supper for the limpid-eyed, wooly moutons.


Eid begins with the King, who is head of both the Kingdom and the country’s 30-million-or-so Muslims, slaughtering his ram on national TV. This happens at about 9 a.m., though we can’t vouch for this as we don’t have a TV and were, at the appointed hour, in a minivan headed to the airport with Samuel’s parents. Hamoud, when he arrived to collect us, shared the sad news that one family’s ram had expired the night before and had been left beside the fountain in Hamoud’s neighborhood for the garbage man to collect. Sidebar: From a friend who lived in Morocco in the 70s, we learned that many government workers are given a ram stipend, kinda like a year-end bonus, to purchase a ram for Eid. He told us that one year, just days before Eid, his secretary came to him to say that the office was taking up a collection for Omar, a fellow employee, to buy a ram. “But didn’t Omar get the stipend?” he asked. “Yes,” she replied, “but Omar lives in a fourth-floor apartment and his ram jumped over the edge, committing suicide.” Driving through the near-empty streets in the gray, early-morning light to the airport, we saw metal bed frames laid over coal fires on the sidewalks – the communal grill stations that are set up throughout the Medina.

A second sidebar: When we asked Hamoud what he thought about Saddam being hung on Eid, he shook his head and said that while he understood that the execution needed to happen, he was sorry that the timing made it appear as if Saddam were being sacrificed like a ram. It minimizes Saddam’s atrocities and also sheds a palor on the Muslim celebration. “It is time to start a new book,” he said, which we take to mean a new chapter. Hear, hear!

That afternoon, as we relaxed with Samuel’s siblings in front of an impressive array of Christmas-present DVDs, we got the occasional whiff of burning fires and grilled meat. When we went up to the terrace that night for our own New Year’s celebration – pizza, beer and some rousing rounds of Celebrity – a fine black ash had settled on the upholstery and the orange glow of dwindling coal fires created a patchwork of light in the inky night.

We didn’t hear the sheeps’ cries as they were killed that morning, nor did the Medina streets subsequently run with blood as we’d been warned. For sheltered Americans used to buying meat in sealed plastic from a grocery store cooler, though, the day was a sobering reminder of the life that precedes a plate of osso buco.


(Bad shot of a man treating his ram to a shoulder ride.)