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.)

Prickly

It's no secret that Samuel has a certain design streak. Admittedly, many of his ideas get a raised eyebrow at first, but often, once installed, or built, or painted, the effect is room defining, in the best way. A month or so ago, we found a few round mirrors at the flea market and Samuel announced that he was going to transform their ho-hum wooden frames by lining them with porcupine quills, like a crown of thorns, only these, with their black and white striations, much lovelier than Christ’s bothersome thistles.

Hamoud assured us that porcupines are native to Morocco, and suggested that we visit the “Berber pharmacies,” or herbalists, ubiquitous in the souks. Their shops are filled with all sorts of exotic treats, some reputed for white and even black magic. We have a friend at one, a sweet Moroccan in his early twenties who speaks fairly good English and claims to have a girlfriend from Florida who is a teacher at the American School. Anyway, Zacharia doesn’t have any when we pay him a visit with our odd request, but promises to procure the quills from his sources in the countryside. In the meantime, Samuel locates some at another herbalist and purchases 200 at 2 dirhams apiece. Based on our fuzzy math, it seems we’ll need about 600 quills to encircle one mirror.

After a week or so, we check back in with Zach and he proudly races to the back of his shop, returning with a porcupine pelt with its quills attached. “Ah,” we say, “but we only need the quills.” “No problem,” says Zach, “just soak the hide in hot water and the quills should pull free.” It’s one of those moments like when you swear off beef after reading about slaughterhouse conditions. The idea of soaking the pelt in hot water until the skin and flesh decide to give up the quills is, well, a bit disgusting. Not only that, but it’s impossible to tell how many quills are on the hide. Samuel makes a quick calculation – a guess, really – and he and Zach reach a price. “If I’m right, we just got a good bargain,” says Sam, “but if not, we just paid too much for the quills, plus I’ve got to do all this work.” You said it, buster, not me.

The next day, Sam gamely does set to work, filling a plastic bucket with hot water and lowering the vile pelt into it. After an hour, he reaches in and pulls the steaming hide from the water and begins the delicate, and immensely painful, extrication of quills. After a minute, Sam begs me to look around for some rubber gloves; I think the task even has him a tad grossed out. And his hands are already red with welts from the prickly quills. I remember my mother tenderly disengaging quills from the mouth of our Labrador retriever, but that was in Maine, where she’d come by them honestly, out protecting our property from rodent intruders. Sam’s welts are self-inflicted and I wonder if his high-concept mirror design merits the pain.




Oh, and not only did the quill extraction take days, each quill, once pulled out, then needed to be cleaned of the flesh that clung to one end and polished with cooking oil. Another ghastly chore for our fearless decorator. Afterwards, Samuel arranged all of the quills, totaling nearly 600, by size and color in glass jars, which have become a fixture on our desk. For days, I’ve asked Sam: “Should we affix the quills to the mirror today – get that thing hung in our bathroom?” “Hmm, maybe,” he replies, distractedly. I’m worried the porcupine quill mirror, like other creative projects involving a fair bit of effort and grit, might remain unfinished, the hard part’s over, after all. Maybe the mirror will be left to be discovered in a dusty closet years from now like a great unfinished masterpiece. “Oh, yeah, that was during his Moroccan period,” some descendant might say when the jars of quills are unearthed.

Two Brothers

Every few weeks, we make a trip to the flea market at Bab El Khemis to check out what’s new at our favorite stalls. Two of our preferred haunts are stalls manned by two brothers, Abdelselik and M’hamoud. One is on a very seedy side alley, where you literally pick your way around piles of old doors, mounds of twisted rebar, broken appliances and quasi-shelters that function much like a homeless tent village. M’hamoud runs this shop and he specializes in 60s and 70s lighting with some other oddball stuff thrown in – ice buckets, vases, picture frames, bad paintings, and the like.

Abdelselik’s stall is on one of the main routes that radiate from the market’s central T. I always know we’re close when we reach a fellow who sells old porcelain bathtubs, sinks and toilets. Here, we’ve found derelict club chairs with Deco-style bentwood arms, more mid-Century lighting, Saarinen tulip chairs, and a wolf skin rug.

Both brothers are in their early twenties and greet us by name and with broad smiles. Samuel has even graduated to a double-cheek kiss from both. Abdelselik has longish wavy hair held under a baseball cap, baggy jeans, and is usually lounging in the sun half-asleep when we come by his booth. M’hamoud, on the other hand, wears a djellabah, round wire-rim glasses and has a neatly trimmed beard. He’s slight and serious whereas Abdelselik is long-limbed and has the heavy eyelids and laid-back manner of someone who smokes a bit of kif from time to time. If he spoke English, I’m sure hiis speach would be peppered with the word “dude”.

Although Abdelselik grabs me by he hand in greeting, and upon last visit bestowed a quick kiss on either cheek, M’hamoud refuses even to shake my hand. It’s not that he isn’t friendly, on the contrary, he’s chatty and always remembers things we’ve liked, asks how recent purchases look in the house . . . it’s just that he’s a stricter Muslim than his brother and won’t touch a woman, let alone another man’s wife. Even when the woman’s husband is standing right there and he’s just kissed and hugged him in a warm embrace. The first time he shunned my handshake I was a bit put-off. M’hamoud was apologetic and touched his hand to his beard as he explained why he had to refuse my proffered hand. The beard, we’ve come to learn, is a sign of someone who takes Islam very seriously; Hamoud actually calls these men “barbes,” which means beard in French, with uncommon derision. He associates them with fundamentalist Islam, which is always a hot-button issue here.

Sometimes I like to think about the origins of one of M’hamoud’s modish plexi-and-mirror chandeliers. I imagine the piece hanging in a swanky Parisian apartment, looking down on a party epitomizing the sex, drugs and rock and roll era. I wonder if the irony of his wares registers with M’hamoud.