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\nI find myself braced, physically tense, as I listen to the children squealing, the noise increasing in pitch and intensity.\u00a0 Still the sheep bleats: I am waiting for it to bleat its last.<\/p>\n
Early in the morning of Eid el Adha, I am listening to the sheep in the neighbor\u2019s garden, waiting for the slaughter.\u00a0 For days, we have been watching the sheep go by, strapped onto the top of busses, lashed onto the backs of bicycles, driven in herds to the edges of towns.
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\nI find myself braced, physically tense, as I listen to the children squealing, the noise increasing in pitch and intensity.\u00a0 Still the sheep bleats: I am waiting for it to bleat its last.<\/p>\n
Ignorant as I am, the first details I learned of Eid el Adha came in discussion of Eid el f\u2019tur at the end of Ramadan.\u00a0 Eid el f\u2019tur (breaking the fast at the end of Ramadan) is\u00a0 also known as the \u201clittle Eid\u201d (eid el sghir) versus the \u201cbig Eid\u201d (eid el kbir) which is Eid el Adha.\u00a0 \u201cSo what happens during the Eid el Adha?\u201d I asked Youssef.\u00a0 \u201cWhat makes it the big celebration?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the festival of the sheep,\u201d he told me, which left me even more befuddled.\u00a0 What\u2019s so special about sheep?\u00a0 This is a religion opposed to idols, right?\u00a0 Surely they\u2019re not worshipping sheep.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happens, exactly?\u201d I asked Youssef, and his face lit up. \u201cMy family all gathers.\u00a0 My father has bought a sheep.\u00a0 My brothers and I hold it by the legs, with the head up (miming a tussle), and my father cuts its throat.\u00a0 Then we hang it up and we pull the skin down and off.\u201d\u00a0 Youssef\u2019s Darija was punctuated by vivid explanatory gestures.\u00a0 I held up my hand to stop him: this was perhaps more than I wanted to know.\u00a0 But after Youssef left that day, I looked online and found multiple photos and descriptions of travelers encountering piles of sheep corpses on street corners.\u00a0 It occurred to me then that Spain might be an appealing destination for my vegetarian family over the Eid holiday.<\/p>\n
But Eid has come and here we are.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost 10 a.m.\u00a0 The children are still squealing in the garden behind our house.\u00a0 At the front, on our left, adult voices build, peak, recede.\u00a0 I hear the scraping of a shovel on the ground, the click of a bucket handle as the bucket is picked up and set down.\u00a0 I hear running water.\u00a0 I can\u2019t seem to turn off my imagination\u2019s visual accompaniment to this particular soundtrack.\u00a0 Inside our house, Jeremy is listening to the story of Mozart\u2019s musical childhood.\u00a0 Outside, there are more sweeping and scraping and popping sounds.\u00a0 Are they chopping the sheep\u2014separating the joints?<\/p>\n
Another man stops by next door.\u00a0 \u201cLa bas?\u201d \u00a0(“What’s up?”)\u00a0There is a guttural satisfaction to the exchange: I\u2019m not sure of the exact words that follow, but I\u2019d swear they\u00a0translate to something like, \u201cNow that\u2019s the way to kill a sheep.\u201d<\/p>\n
James and I go out on the balcony and look over into the courtyard next door, where a sheep carcass hangs by its back legs, all pink and white. James goes over to greet the neighbors: they welcome him in, past the hanging carcass.\u00a0 They encourage him to take photos; they force-feed him sweet tea and cookies.\u00a0 They urge him to bring me over as well, but he demurs on my behalf, pleading a combination of illness and vegetarianism. I wave from the balcony, feeling like an old-style Moroccan housewife, happy to keep my Eid a vicarious experience.<\/p>\n There are thudding sounds from next door and I wonder again if they\u2019re quartering the sheep.\u00a0 The family eats one quarter, gives a quarter to the poor, preserves a quarter, and gives a quarter to a second cousin or similarly distant relative.\u00a0 But no: still the pink and white carcass hangs, complete.\u00a0 James reports that the noise is the removal of the ram\u2019s horns, before the head is returned to the roasting wheelbarrow.\u00a0 Eventually, they\u2019ll crack open the skull and eat the roasted brain: a delicacy. Noon: James takes Jeremy off to visit our friend Said, at Said\u2019s father\u2019s house, carrying a cake we bought to contribute to their festivities.\u00a0 On the way, James and Jem watch a sheep being skinned; near the entrance to the house, they pick their way through pools of watery blood.\u00a0 Said apologizes for what he names the unsanitary conditions\u2014James responds honestly that he\u2019s very taken with everyone\u2019s openness and communal celebration.<\/p>\n In both cases, the readiness is all: Allah and Yahweh both permit the substitution of a ram for a son, right at the brink of destruction.\u00a0 In the Muslim version of the story, Ibrahim is rewarded for his obedience with a second son, Isaac.\u00a0 What does Isma\u2019al receive?\u00a0 A lifetime of sibling rivalry?\u00a0 Does it take a ritual sacrifice of a first child in order to have a second? We bake a chocolate cake and make lentil soup for a gathering of Americans abroad.\u00a0 \u201cThe Al Akhawayn Christmas party!\u201d one of our guests quips.<\/p>\n The day after our party, a man comes down the street on a bike with a cart hooked to the back to collect the hanging sheep skins.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t they shear the sheep first?\u201d asks Zo\u00eb.\u00a0 \u201cIt seems so wasteful.\u00a0 All that wool gone to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n I gesture at the stuffed wool cushions that make up the banquettes on which we sit.\u00a0 \u201cThey don\u2019t go to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n Zo\u00eb makes a face.\u00a0 \u201cI wish you hadn\u2019t told me that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early in the morning of Eid el Adha, I am listening to the sheep in the neighbor\u2019s garden, waiting for the slaughter.\u00a0 For days, we have been watching the sheep go by, strapped onto the top of busses, lashed onto the backs of bicycles, driven in herds to the edges of towns. I find myself … Continue reading Eid el Adha<\/span>
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\nI rethink \u201cpopping\u201d as a description for the noises I heard: it must have been the sound of the skin being peeled off the body of the sheep, inch by little inch.\u00a0 Ripping, snapping, perhaps. \u00a0On the wall across the road, the skin hangs, like a pair of footy pajamas turned inside out.\u00a0 It waits, as a gift, for whoever may need it.
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\nMeanwhile, the sheep\u2019s head is roasting on a fire the neighbors have built in a metal wheelbarrow: it looks both unreal and a little too lifelike.
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\n11 a.m.\u00a0 Around the neighborhood, smoke is rising from a dozen courtyards or more.\u00a0 The smoke and smell of roasting flesh drift into the house and I close the doors and windows.\u00a0 The noise of bleating sheep has diminished but not disappeared. Zo\u00eb swears she hears the sheep screaming; my hearing is not so finely discriminated, but the bleating is sometimes more frantic in quality, and sometimes abruptly interrupted.<\/p>\n
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\nStill the sheep in back of our house continues to bleat.\u00a0 I\u2019m starting to feel grumpy with that slow-moving family.\u00a0 For the sheep\u2019s sake, get on with it, people!\u00a0 A small child\u2019s squalling blends with the more distant bleats.\u00a0 Online, the Huffington Post presents photos of Eid el Adha from around the Muslim world in 2012.\u00a0 Each photo includes the explanation that the holiday celebrates Abraham\u2019s willingness to sacrifice his son Isma\u2019al.\u00a0 How did I manage to ignore this for so many years?
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\nI prefer the Muslim version of the story, really: Isma\u2019al acceding to the sacrifice, unlike poor innocent, ignorant Isaac.\u00a0 The Muslim Ibrahim, like his God, asks more than a father should dream of asking\u2014but the Judeo-Christian Abraham seems to me to betray both the duty of a father to protect his offspring and the truthful relationship of a father with his son.<\/p>\n
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\nFinally, all the sheep\u2014even the one behind our house\u2014are silent.\u00a0 James returns home, impressed at the number of people so very competent at managing the slaughter that that undergirds carnivorous consumption. This is more honest, he insists, than a lifestyle in which killing is rampant but almost totally denied.<\/p>\n