“Eid” is a full sentence.

Posting to: Pink Martini, Hang On Little Tomato

I beg of you, Pink Martini: let’s never stop falling in love.

–

Eid al Adha, the Islamic holiday marking the end of the Hajj, was celebrated here in Morocco not too long ago.

I’ve just now recovered.

Eid and the weeks leading up to it are an exciting time, most comparable to the Christmas season back home.  Host Mom invited me to celebrate Eid at their house weeks before the holiday, and it was a talking point at every English class I held for the entire month of November.

I wanted to talk about Thanksgiving, or “our Eid” for the class right before Eid… my class of Feisty Ladies in my souqtown were not having any of that Thanksgiving nonsense.

The festivities started the day before the holiday, when I had my hands henna-ed, bought an amelhaf, and spent the night at  Host Family’s house to help with generic Eid prep.  In actuality, I just kept the kids out of Host Mom’s hair by distracting them with a camera.  The results were an adorable mess of photos which, sadly, I can’t post publicly.  The kids also got to show off their new Eid clothes (both Eid al Adha and Eid al Fitr call for new clothing) to me, as well as the hottest Eid toy on the market: a battery-operated “computer” that sings Qur’anic verses at touch of a button.

The henna turned out great, and I had been meaning to buy an amelhaf for a while now.  The kids were super-cute in their new clothes, even if they only wore them for five minutes.  The “computer”, however, I could’ve done without.

The morning of Eid was a quiet one.  We woke up, had a modest breakfast of Berber coffee, special fancy bread and jam, and then Host Dad and Brother went to the mosque for Eid prayers.  The ladies and I (well, okay, just Host Mom and Sister) cleaned the house and prepped the kitchen for the, uh, festivities that were to come.

Host Dad and Brother came home after prayers, and after changing clothes and arming themselves with knives and a toy to distract Host Brother, the boys headed out to the neighbor’s house to slaughter the sheep.

Highly Embarrassing Moment: I left my cell phone in my purse that morning, and wanted to stick it in my amelhaf before heading outside… and on this noble quest, I managed to walk in on Host Dad changing his pants.  There are no designated bedrooms in the house, so he was changing his clothes in the television room.  Nothing was exposed or inappropriately viewed, but we were both still mortified.  Host Mom laughed at the two of us, but we steered clear of each other until the late afternoon.  Considering the fact that Host Dad has never even seen my hair, the fact that I walked in on him at such an exposed time was… well, not what I had been hoping for.

Eid al Adha celebrates the end of the Hajj, like I mentioned earlier, and the tradition here in Morocco is to also honor the story of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his only son to God’s will.  God, seeing Abraham’s sincerity, told him to sacrifice an animal instead — and that, my friends, is what we do here as well.  Like every American family has a turkey at Thanksgiving, every Moroccan family has a sheep (or a goat, or sometimes a camel) to kill.

Eid al Adha is also called “Eid Kabir,” or “Big Eid.”  This is the bloodiest of the Eids.

The sheep – who no one seemed to want to look in the eye, poor guy-  was killed in accordance with Islamic law (to make it halal), and then it was no-holds-barred from there on out.  Anyone who can wield a knife was welcomed to help skin and clean out the carcass, and we had a few participants take a stab at it.  I had a front-row seat for the post-bismillah festivities (read: I sat in a lawn chair and watched the whole thing go down), though I had my camera and a plethora of local children to keep one eye on.

The most interesting thing about this was that everyone was really excited to watch all of this go down.  The kids all wanted to help out, and everyone in the neighboring houses came out and made an appearance at one point or another.  The sheep, after it’s killed, is immediately strung up to drain the blood.  Then it’s skinned, and the viscera is removed from the abdomen of the animal.  Finally it’s all cleaned and prepped to be cooked.

After the animal is emptied (there’s no graceful of saying that, is there?) and cleaned, it’s time for lunch.  The viscera – today, the liver and stomach – is skewered, seasoned and barbecued.  Delicious, or so I’m told.

I didn’t indulge.  Go ahead and judge.  When you come to Morocco and spend Eid in the countryside, you go right ahead eat whatever you want.  I was perfectly content with lentils, tomato salad and bread and argan oil.

The rest of the day was dedicated to admiring the animal that was moved indoors to hang and continue dripping in the kitchen, living room or salon, and to enjoying the friends and family that stop by to visit and wish everyone a warm mubarak lwachr, or happy holidays.

For me, that first evening was dedicated to the children driving me up the wall. I love them dearly, I do!  But I’m still recovering from those four months of homestay.  I’m an independent lady; I need my space.

Day two of Eid – oh, I’m sorry, did you think we were done celebrating? – is when my host family chose to visit Host Grandmother in a neighboring douar.  I did not accompany the family on this outing because I had accepted an invitation to go and meet a man that lives and works in America.  I was hoping for tea and a fairly smooth exit before dinnertime, because day two’s featured bodypart is head.

My counterpart is the one that told me about this man – my counterpart called our visit “going to North Carolina.”  This man and his brother were both born and raised in my village, but now work in North Carolina and Copenhagen, respectively.  When Counterpart and I walked in and were immediately escorted to separate rooms, however, I knew that this would be a bit more than just tea.  What was supposed to be “tea so Nicole can meet the other American” turned out to be lunch, tea, nap/prayer time, another tea, and an invite to eat dinner, spend the night, marry someone’s grandson, move to Sweden and receive a cow as a wedding gift.

Day three of Eid – this is called Big Eid for a reason, folks – was more visiting, but this time I came prepared: I debuted my new, self-wrapped amelhalf (wrapping that bad boy myself was a huge accomplishment), and set aside the entire day for socializing.  I went to Other Counterpart’s house to enjoy tea, lunch and more tea with her and her beautiful family.  Day three doesn’t feature any special body part, but the socializing aspect is exactly the same as day two.

No offers of marriage or livestock today, but lots of praise for the wrapping of my amelhaf.  As usually happens when I’m in an amelhaf, I was passed off as a Moroccan – someone or another’s family member – a number of times, but playing dress-up gets such interesting reactions that I can’t help but go along with it.  I even had one lady insisting that she had seen me at someone’s wedding over the summer (nope, she didn’t).  Poor thing could not understand that I was an American, from America, with two American parents, who just happened to be wearing an amelhaf and eating out of a tagine with my hands.

And that, my friends, is how my first Eid went down.

I’m left with just one question now: how the heck is Eid celebrated in America?  There’s no extended visiting, no old ladies offering you men and cows, no whole sheep… hmmmm.