The Miracle Of Mutton

It's amazing what excess mutton will do for relationships.

The past week people have come out of the woodwork to bring me leftover meat from Eid al-Kabir.

First my Arabic tutor brought me a large salad and a huge tajine of mutton kefta (essentially: ground mutton patties). Then, two days later, another friend I hadn't seen in months appeared at my doorstep with a similar meal. Fortunately I didn't have other plans. We sat down together (but not at my table--I've learned that Moroccans feel uncomfortable eating Western-style). Then yesterday right around lunchtime the concierge knocked at my door with a plate of ribs.

Yesterday, I got to see how mutton plays into relationships of authority. I ran into a student who hasn't bothered to come to class all semester (it's the seventh week now). He assured me he has been very busy but he intends to start coming and then catch up on everything he missed. On parting he offered to bring some mutton to class this week (he swears he's coming this week).

I don't mind mutton. And such gifts of food are excellent for my food budget. I really can't complain.

Eid Al-Kabir 2010

Some readers have asked if I will be commenting on the holiday or posting photos. Unfortunately, this year I did not celebrate Eid Al-Kabir other than a post-holiday meal of mutton that my Arabic tutor brought over.

However, feel free to read about my great experience last year watching the sheep slaughter, eating boulfef, and visiting my host's extended family.

Holiday Fever

When I was younger, the week before Christmas vacation was filled with excited anticipation of presents, freedom, food and family visits. I can't imagine that a classroom of 30 students just like me was very fun to manage back then.

It's strange to be on the other side now. The last week it has been insanely difficult to get my students to focus. The Eid holiday will begin in the middle of this week. Schools take the entire week off. There will be many visits to extended family. And a lot of food will be eaten (mostly mutton).

Before the holiday many schools gave exams. So my students didn't have time to do the homework I assigned them. The relation between this weariness and the general aura of anticipation matched their attitude in my class perfectly as they oscillated between cranky resistance and enthusiastic distraction.

Unlike the other schools, we are still open two more days this week.

I have already given up on trying to teach something. Classes will be smaller; attention spans will be shorter. So I think I will just lead a discussion on their holiday plans.

And I will feel sorry for all the teachers in times past that had to put up with me before a holiday.

Ramadan Ends

These days, the coffee shops close between 9 PM and 10 PM these days. They open in the morning rather than after sunset. The streets are remarkably quiet in the late evening. Step inside, the papered-over alcohol shelfs are now clearly visible. The population of prostitutes seems to have increased a few fold in the past few nights. There are fewer fights in the streets.

Ramadan is over.

Other than severely limiting my daytime consumption outside the house, Ramadan only really affected my life via teaching. Our intensive Ramadan term ended on Thursday last week, right before Eid al-Fitr. I'm proud to report my Advanced 1 students did quite well on the exam. Afterwards, in order to help them continue improving their English, I wrote up personalized evaluations for all those who have managed to find me online (a majority of the class in this case). Their responses gave me some warm fuzzies, but they also left me scratching my head a bit.

Thank you very much
You are a great teacher too
and a little bit crazy but it's fine
my writing was good thanks to you and your advice
and if you had any question about Darija, Arabic, or Moroccan culture you can ask me, I'll be glad to answer you ;D

I'm a great teacher, but I'm insane. That's a good combination, right? Well, he's obviously fine with it.

And another:

I will always be thankful to you .
For all the hard work and efforts you did . You are the bestest Teacher in the Alc .

I appreciate the thought, but the linguist in me can't help but notice that she calqued over "faire des efforts" ("exert oneself"/"try hard"/"put in a good effort") from French straight into English. And knowing the student, I'm pretty sure that 'bestest' is not a purposeful cutesy grammatical exaggeration. I'm left wondering if we should have reviewed superlatives this term.

My Valentine's Day

A new group of American exchange students has arrived in Meknes.

Despite some hesitant opposition at the thought of associating with a gaggle of naive Americans, we decided to invite them over for a little Valentine's Day soirée last night.

Before the party I had to teach, though, as I do every Sunday afternoon.

The class seemed rather empty when the first bell rang, so I waited for five to ten minutes. Even then, there were only 11 out of 18 students. I was pretty sure that the Moroccan semester break had ended. And I couldn't think of any other reason for the mass absenteeism, so I asked those present, "Why are there so many people missing? Is today a Moroccan holiday I have never heard of?"

They answered in concert, "Valentine's Day, teacher!!"

I smirked and nodded my head slowly. Then I tried to give them some background on the holiday they are so eager to assimilate. I explained how Valentine's Day has mutated from a regular saint's day on the Catholic calendar to a day to commemorate love to the current celebration of love through commercialism.

Something tells me that my students didn't catch the irony in my tone.


Back home, the party started strangely. I had been expecting eight to ten people, so I was a bit surprised to see 15 Americans file in with my Moroccan friend. She was supposed to have told them to bring their own snacks and drinks, but I wasn't sure if the message had been conveyed: they only had three bottles of wine and no food.

It was very quiet at first, almost awkwardly so. I made some small talk and then headed into the kitchen to make some Moroccan tea to compensate for the lack of drinks.

Even more Americans came slightly later with food and more drinks. The conversation gradually divided and subdivided, raising in volume at every division. By the time some of our Moroccan friends showed up, it was a lively affair.

The group surprised me. A number had lived in other countries before, in China, in Germany, and in Nigeria. And yet despite their previous international experience, very few spoke any French or Arabic--in fact, many chose the University of Meknes because it has low standards regarding prior language experience.

It was also interesting to hear them talk about the same shocks and jolts we encountered when we first arrived: learning to discern Moroccans' intentions, the differing conception of personal space, the awkward pleasure of the hammam, the prostitution-driven bar culture, etc.

I usually dislike spending time with Americans abroad. I find our values and worldview differ too much. But a number of Americans I have met recently are exceptions to the rule. Perhaps this group will contain some more.

Happy New Year!

Today marks the beginning of a new year in the Islamic calendar.

Unlike the Gregorian calendar, the Islamic calendar is lunar. In pre-Koranic times, the Arabic calendar had extra days at the end of every lunar year to make the its new year coincide with the solar year. However, the Koran forbid that practice. So now, the Islamic months do not match up with our calendar. As a result, Ramadan, Eid al Kabir, and the New Year shift slightly every year in relation to our calendar.

The big question for Daniel and me was whether or not anything would be open today. Almost everything was open when I bopped out to get a few things in the morning. But then when we headed into the medina this afternoon, we encountered nothing but closed shops.

We asked one of the few men selling cigarettes on the street, "Will everything open up after lunch or is it closed for the holiday?"

He replied, "Everything's closed today." We figured as much. But then he continued, "Everyone went to pray." And he made the bowing and praying motion to further signify what he meant.

Then Daniel and I realized: it's Friday. Many places close in the afternoon for the important afternoon prayers and then most Moroccan families have couscous and spend the rest of the day together. It's a normal day here; it just so happens that it's a normal Friday.

So we had a coffee in an empty cafe and headed back home.

Eid al Kabir, part 2

During the preparation of the boulfef meal, cousins and uncles dropped by to say hello, sometimes multiple times. Afterwards, it was time for my friend Anass to do the same. He invited me to join him as he participated in this masculine visiting ritual, and I readily agreed.

The first house we visited was only a few blocks away, which explained why the uncle and cousin had stopped by multiple times during the morning. The family was watching a Moroccan movie called "The Sheep" (think Eid al Kabir kitsch on the order of "It's a Wonderful Life" for Christmas) and eating their meal of boulfef. Apparently some of the family members dislike sheep innards (I can't imagine why...), and so they had cooked an entire chicken for the sheep guts-haters in the family. They invited me to eat, and so I bellied up to the table and ate along with them, my second boulfef meal of the day. They all chatted in Arabic, paying special attention to me, asking where I was from and if I liked Morocco. (In contrast to some European countries where the polite thing to do is to totally ignore the guest.)

The second house was a little further away. They had a gigantic parlor with Moroccan couches lining every wall, enough to seat dozens of guests. They had finished the boulfef meal but had some sweets and tea to offer the 10 or so guests who were currently there. And they were also watching the Eid movie "The Sheep".

The third set of Anass's relatives lived in the medina. So for safety reasons, Anass' brother stayed with the car while we entered. After winding through narrow covered alley ways, we entered a small room maybe a tenth of the size of the previous parlor filled with the same number of people. Two or three people had to stand once we arrived and were given seats.

Never one to let sweets pass me by even after huge meals, I inquired about some cookies sitting on the table. They told me the name of the cookies and encouraged me to eat some. So, of course, I did.

Anass didn't seem to want to stay long. After just a few minutes of chitchat in the crowded room, he stood up to leave. He said his goodbyes, and I began to follow suit. However, before I could get far, the grandmother figure who was sitting nearest the cookies, the object of my curiosity, asked if I wanted to take some with me. I knew it was impolite to refuse food, so I agreed to take some. She went into the kitchen and rummaged around until she found a large plastic bag. Then she came back to the table and started stuffing the cookies into the bag like nobody's business. I said, "That's good. Thanks." She just shook her head at me as if I didn't know what I really wanted. She kept stuffing cookies in the bag. I reached out for the bag and repeated, "Thanks. That's good." She didn't stop. I tried to wrest control of the bag from her as she continued to stuff cookies into it. After a mini-tussle between the cookie-packing grandmother and me, I emerged with a bag filled with a few dozen Eid al Kabir cookies.

As we left the small room, Anass led me in the opposite direction from which we had entered and into a gigantic open space. I realized then that his family were not poor medina-dwellers. They owned one of the ancient riadhs, beautiful homes built into the walls of the old city complete with courtyards, baths and tiled walls close to 30 feet tall. We took some photos of everyone and then got back into the car to leave.

After the family visits, I parted ways with Anass. I thanked him for the food and the opportunity to accompany him on the family visits, and then I came back to the house and checked on Daniel. He had come down with serious flu-like symptoms and ended up spending the entire day in bed. As I closed my curtains to head to bed, I noticed the sheep carcasses strung outside, ready for a week's worth of cooking.

I sat down to read. But I was so stuffed that I couldn't concentrate. I could feel the blood engorging my stomach. Soon I had fallen asleep on the couch.

An hour or two later, my phone rang. It was Anass: "We're waiting for you to eat dinner." I jumped up, got ready, and headed out the door.

As soon as I got in the door, his family immediately inquired about Daniel. "He's still not feeling very well," I said. They insisted that I take some medicine that they had on hand over to Daniel. So Anass and I headed right back over to our house and we gave him the medicine.

When we returned, Anass' father was working on a used bike with training wheels, preparing it as a gift to give to some cousins. Anass' mother sat next to me and we started talking a little bit about the holiday Eid al Kabir. She asked if I knew the story.

"Yes, I know the story. It's actually very similar to one found in the Bible."
"Oh, ok."
"Except in the Bible, it's Isaac and not Ishmael."
"Oh no, it's Ishmael."
"Yes, Muslims believe it was Ishmael. Christians and Jews believe it was Isaac."
"Well, that's wrong."

A little later, I was called to the table to eat Dawara, the sheep's cooked intestines. I was so stuffed; I didn't want to eat any more. But I knew it wasn't polite to refuse the meal. It was slow-going, but I started making a dent in my section of the gigantic serving bowl. Anass' mother reproached me, "You're not eating anything."

I responded, "I am. I'm eating. Look."
"That's nothing. You're not eating anything."

I kept plugging away, but it was so difficult. The sauce on the Dawara was actually quite good. The problem wasn't the sheep's intestines; it was my intestines and how full they already were. Eventually I couldn't do anymore. So I said "Hamdullah", wiped my hands, and swore off sheep's guts for at least a year.

After the meal, Anass' father showed me the dual language French-Arabic Koran that the family uses. I was surprised to learn that a well-off, educated Arab speaker requires French help to understand the Koran. Theoretically, Modern Standard Arabic is the same as Koranic Arabic with just some slight vocabulary and grammar changes.

We sat around watching TV and then I went back home. Daniel still wasn't feeling very good. I tried to read again, but again failed to get far. I was asleep in no time at all.

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.

Further Notes on Eid al Kabir

I've continued to ask a number of my Moroccan friends and students about the upcoming Eid al Kabir holiday. Yesterday, for instance, only 5 of my 14 students showed up for class. So, rather than pursuing the lesson I had planned, I led the group in a discussion about the holiday, working on the near future ('I'm going to',....'then my family's going to...', 'next we're going to...", etc.)

For Christians encountering the Eid al Adha, the other name for Eid al Kabir, we might wonder why an animal sacrifice is necessary. In Christian theology, the crucifixion of Jesus was a once for all sort of sacrifice that makes further atonement by animal death unnecessary.

However, the most common explanations for the holiday, as I've briefly outlined before, involve aspects other than atonement. Particularly, Moroccans have mentioned 1) remembering Abraham's unquestioning obedience to God, 2) spending time with family, and 3) social solidarity.

In terms of family togetherness, the holiday is a lot like Thanksgiving and Christmas all wrapped up into one. People travel to be with their extended family, often the only time of the year, and they kill an animal and eat it in every imaginable way. After the meal, visits to family and friends in the city take up much of the following few days. For most people, it seems this togetherness is the real point. Theological abstraction is always harder to grasp, I think, than the tangible reality of being with loved ones.

As for social solidarity, Muslims are commanded in the Sunna to give 1/3 of their meat to the poor of society. Sometimes, richer Muslims will even buy whole sheep for poorer families.

But family togetherness and social solidarity aside, that still leaves the question: Why kill a sheep? Why use the most universal act for appeasing God's anger to accomplish these other goals? The way it has been represented to me here puts the main emphasis on the commemoration of Abraham's obedience in his willingness to sacrifice his son out of obedience to God, and not on an attempt to appease God's righteous anger.

Islam's insistence emphasis on submission to God is demonstrated quite powerfully in the story. Abraham submits obediently to God's command to sacrifice his son, despite his reservations. When God sees that Abraham is faithful, he stops him and provides a sheep instead. From a Christian perspective, the foreshadowing of God's own sacrifice of his son and the atonement aspect are missing from this Islamic ritual of the sheep killing, but Christians should be able to appreciate the commemoration of unwavering obedience to God, even if the content and means of that obedience takes different forms in Islamic and Christian theology.

Animal Slaughtering Feast Holidays

Every year for the past 25 years of my life, I have spent this last full week of November preparing for Thanksgiving. And by 'preparing' I mean doing a little bit of schoolwork and then relaxing; my mother usually does the cooking. The lone exception, of course, was the year I lived in France, when I myself threw a Thanksgiving feast for over 40 exchange students. But every year, in some way or another, I have prepared for an ostensibly religious holiday that involves the slaughter of an animal.

This year is no different.

Of course, this year the animal in question is a sheep, and the ostensibly religious holiday is the Eid al Kabir, one of the most important holidays of the Muslim calendar.

The past few days, I have been asking my Moroccan co-workers, friends, and acquaintances what Eid al Kabir means to them. There are a few main themes that emerge.

The first is the reference to the Koranic story of Abraham and Ishmael. The story roughly follows the Biblical outline of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, except that the sons are switched. Abraham is commanded of God to offer up his son as a sacrifice, and Abraham follows God's command. But just as he is about to kill his son, an angel stops him and instead, an animal is provided for the sacrifice.

There are two main points to the story. The first is that God expects us to submit to his command come what may. We are to offer utter obedience to God whatever he may call us to do. The other is that animals sacrificed are pleasing to God in some sort of way. I have tried to push a little bit on this last point to understand in what way the sacrifice pleases God or soothes his wrath, but I haven't heard any great answers. This last point is important because for Christians, the sacrifice of Jesus is supposed to be a once for all sacrifice.

The other two themes that emerge from Moroccan's discussion of Eid al Kabir are those of family and social solidarity. Eid al Kabir is the one holiday when the entire family gathers together in the same place (although sometimes it also happens during Ramadan or Eid el Saghir that follows Ramadan). So, we might say, Eid al Kabir is a bit like Christmas and Thanksgiving all rolled into one.

Also, since every family is required to kill a sheep and eat it (but not until after the king has killed his sheep), there is an opportunity for richer members of society to help poorer members of society. I have been told that many of the rich will buy an extra sheep (or even several) for the poorer families of Moroccan society in order for them to participate in this important holiday and feast.

I haven't been invited to Eid al Kabir just yet, but I'm hoping an invitation will be forthcoming. In the meantime, I'm planning a little get together with the other Americans before work on Thursday.

Happy Independence Day!

Yesterday was the 53rd anniversary of Moroccan independence, and so I had the day off.

The past week I have asked class after class what they plan to do for the holiday. Are there fireworks? Parades? A special type of meal? A picnic?

Apparently, the answer to all those questions is "no".

I asked my students what they planned to do on the day off, and the most popular response in all classes was "sleep".

Green March Day

Yesterday I had the entire day off. Because I essentially work every day, it was the first day I hadn't been in to work since school started. The reason?

Green March Day.

In 1975, an International Court of Justice ruled that the Spanish colony of Western Sahara had some, but only some, ties to the old sultan of Morocco. King Hassan II gathered 350,000 unarmed Moroccans to the Moroccan-Western Sahara border to march into Western Sahara territory. They bore Moroccan flags, banners calling for the "return" of the Moroccan Sahara, and photographs of the king and the Koran.

The territory is still disputed. The Polisario, an independence movement supported by Algeria, is still somewhat active, although there was a cease fire signed in 1991. Relations with Algeria and the Polisario are still quite tense.

Because of the recent history of the holiday, I was expecting some sort of big patriotic displays. Instead, it was a bit like the Bastille Day I spent in France last year: except for a few things on TV, there were no real visible signs of the holiday.

I asked my coworkers about the meaning of the day, and they responded that it was just a day for relaxation...

...which is exactly what I did.