Eid al Kabir, part 1

Eid al Kabir is one of the few truly global holidays. There are over a billion Muslims throughout the world and all of them celebrate it in some form or another, the most fortunate in Mecca, fulfilling one of the five pillars of Islam.

And yet despite the global nature of the holiday, I never really knew much about it before I moved to Morocco. I see some news coverage every year, but I don't generally pay a great deal of attention to it.

One year, I remember there was a controversy in Britain because the government was trying to keep neighborhoods hygienic as Muslims brought sheep into their homes. Then two years ago, I ran into a Ghanaian immigrant in the alley behind my Philadelphia house, and he explained why his son and all the other Muslim boys were playing football there in the middle of a school day. He had plenty of experience discussing the holidays with Christians, so his explanation drew on my knowledge of the Bible but deftly pointed out the differences. Even with those few encounters with the holiday, I found myself remarkably ignorant as the week of the Eid began. (Of course, when I ask Muslims here about Christian holidays or even about the commercialized bastardizations of religious holidays we have in America, there is a similar ignorance.)

On Saturday morning, my friend Anass stopped by around 9 o'clock. Then we headed, not to his house, but across the street to another house. He explained, "The sheep is at my cousin's house." As we walked, a mass of men came down the street, emerging from the mosque after the important prayers the morning of the Eid.
I met the sheep on the back patio of the house. Like many other sheep, it was bought in the week or two preceding the Eid al Kabir and only moved to the house the day or two before. Unlike my apartment building, there were no telltale sheep droppings scattered throughout the entryway of the building. However, in the corner of the patio where the sheep was tied up, it was just as bad.

After saying hello to the sheep, we sat down in the family area and watched TV while we waited for Anass's dad and the butcher. There were concerts of traditional Eid music and some European soccer games, but nothing terribly interesting.

After only a short wait, the rest of the family and the butcher arrived. We all gathered on the patio. The butcher held the sheep down, and the dad slit the throat of the sheep. The mother recited a verse from the Koran. Blood gushed forth. The sheep's head slowly lowered as its life quickly flowed away.

Then in a sudden spurt of resistance to death, the sheep started moving its legs as if to gallop to safety. But, as the sheep was lying on its side, it went nowhere. It only spread blood all over the courtyard and onto all of us. The father bore the brunt of the blood spattering, and so he left to change clothing. I escaped with only a few drops on my shoes and jeans.


As the sheep slowed to a complete stop, the butcher began to dress it. For the next hour or so, we rotated between helping clean the patio and watching TV. The mother was given the intestines, the heart, and the liver to start the long meal preparations. The first meal of the day is called "boulfef". It consists of skewers ("qtaban") of sheep heart and liver, wrapped in fat and seasonings. The second meal of the day consists of the cleaned and cooked intestines of the sheep, served in a very tasty sauce.

While the mother and daughter prepared the meal, we men sat in the family room and watched TV. Occasionally, they would try to teach me Arabic words. At one point, the TV showed the prayers of the king and his top advisors followed by the killing of his sheep. The entire family entered the room to watch, but after that short pause, the women returned to the kitchen to finish cleaning and cooking the sheep's innards.

We changed houses to Anass' house to eat the boulfef meal. It was quite good. I was quite surprised. I figured I would sit around for a while and then head back home after a great cultural experience. But my day was far from over.