Last week, I had the pleasure of experiencing Eid al-Adha
(referred to in Morocco
as Eid al-Kbir), one of Islam’s most important holidays worldwide. The holiday
honors a story familiar to Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike: the story of
Abraham (in Arabic, Ibrahim), and his willingness to sacrifice his son by God’s
command. As the story goes, Abraham is spared the fate of sacrificing his own
son at the last minute, having demonstrated his faith and submission, and
sacrifices a ram instead of his son. Islam places great significance on this
story, a fact illustrated by the importance placed on the celebration of Eid
al-Kbir. In addition to prayer, Muslims with the means to do so celebrate the
holiday with the sacrifice of an animal, symbolizing Abraham’s sacrifice; in
Morocco, that animal is almost always a ram. Each family gets their own ram,
and every single meal for days following the sacrifice is filled with ram meat,
not a piece going to waste.
I’d heard about Eid al-Kbir before, many times. Since
arriving to country, I’d heard from PCVs and Moroccan nationals alike about the
holiday, and though the stories took different spins, they all had one thing in
common: Eid al-Kbir was something to look forward to, not to be missed. For
PCVs, the holiday seemed to be revered as a sort of cross-cultural marathon,
something every volunteer had to go through and would surely be awed by. In the
same conversation, a second-year volunteer said two seemingly contradictory
things about it: “Oh, there were so many sheep organs, I can’t even begin to
tell you. We were all so sick afterwards,” and, “Oh, you can’t do Eid al-Kbir
alone. You’ve got to spend it with a family, absolutely.” For Moroccans, the
holiday was talked about the way American’s might talk about Christmas:
excited, even months in advance, that it was approaching, and excited for us
Americans to experience the best Moroccan holiday there was. The happy tone of
the conversations was usually spoiled for me, though, when they would whip out
their computer, and, without warning, start showing me pictures of the sheep
they’d slaughtered the year before, in all its gruesome detail. Eid al-Kbir’s
importance was driven home for me the most when my host mom, having heard me
mention that I don’t eat very much meat, immediately thought of the holiday,
saying, ‘Oh, but what are you going to do on for l-Eid?!”
Considering all of this, I found myself simultaneously
dreading and looking forward to what would surely be one of the most meaningful
cultural exchanges I would have in country. As the day drew nearer, it became
apparent to me that Eid al-Kbir in Morocco is a lot like Christmas in America,
at least in terms of its importance, the thousands of people traveling to visit
their families, the way everything was set to shut down for the holiday, the
week and a half-long school break, etc. Peace Corps even imposed a travel ban
on us during the week of l-Eid, telling us that the roads were especially
dangerous in the days surrounding the holiday due to all of the people
traveling to be with their families. As the week of l-Eid approached, I started
receiving a steady stream of invitations from people I knew, all generously
inviting me to spend the holiday in their homes, with their families. I ended
up agreeing to spending the bulk of the first day with a family that lives near
me, and to visit the numerous other families throughout the week.
The day before the holiday, I went over to see the family
with whom I was going to spend l-Eid, to inquire about what time would be best
for me to come over the following day. Not surprisingly, I was invited inside,
and soon found myself chatting and making cookies with Habiba, the mother of
the household, and her daughters. I sat with them for hours, helping to dip the
fresh cookies in chocolate, jelly, and other toppings. The presence of family,
the anticipation of an upcoming holiday, making cookies – it truly did remind
me of the holiday season in America ,
and my heart was warmed. They soon asked me about American cookies, and when I
went home that night, I whipped up some classic chocolate chip cookies to bring
over for them to try.
I’m not going to lie: through all of the holiday cheer and
warm generosity of the family, part of me was truly terrified at the prospect
of what I was about to witness. I had never seen an animal killed before, especially
not one the size of a ram, right in front of me. Nor had I ever eaten many
organs, with the exception of German liverwurst, a spread that I was unaware
was even liver for the first 7 years or so that I ate it. What if I passed out
in their home? Gagged while eating lungs during their special meal? Vomited all
over their carpet, on their holiday equivalent to Christmas? They had
generously invited me into their home on the biggest holiday of the year, and
here I was unsure if I was going to even be able to hold it together. I didn’t
know what to expect, but I knew that I was going to go over there and try to
put my best face on, no matter what. I was just going to have to suck it up and
pretend I was on fear factor, or something to that effect.
And so it was that at 8am the next morning, with chocolate
chip cookies in hand and nervous lump in my throat, I walked down the street to
Habiba’s house, to take part in my first Eid al-Kbir. We had an elaborate (meat
free) breakfast to start out, complete with fresh-baked bread, honey, olive
oil, misimin (my favorite!), bugrir (sport of like crepes) and cookies.
Shortly afterward, the main event was about to start. The family
started migrating out to the courtyard, and I went out with them, sticking
close Radia, Habiba’s niece and one of my favorite Dar Chebab girls. I could
have opted out of watching the sacrifice, had I really wanted to; nobody was
going to force me, though they clearly wanted me experience it with them. I had
long-since decided that I wanted to watch it, though, both for the obvious
cultural experience reasons, and for more complex reasons related to my
thoughts on American culture and meat consumption.
The contrast between Moroccans’ experience with the meat
they eat and the typical American experience is stark. For chicken, most
Moroccans stop by their local chicken shop, usually a small, white storefront
with the clucking sound of many chickens coming loudly from behind the counter.
The chicken they buy will be fresh, killed, feathered, and cleaned earlier that
day by the man seen behind the counter. For red meat in Morocco , one
only needs to stop by the local butcher, which you can’t miss – there will be
several whole bodies of fresh meat right there, hanging on hooks outside the
store. Sure, there are some brands of factory-processed meat in Moroccan
supermarkets, but you won’t see it sold outside big cities frequented by
foreigners. For the vast majority of most Moroccans, the connection between the
food on their table and the animal that had to die to make it possible is
clear, unbroken; they likely saw whatever animal it was as part of one of the
many herds that wander through town, or at the very least, as a whole animal,
being cleaned and chopped up by the butcher down the street. And, every year on
Eid al-Kabir, each Moroccan family buys their own sheep, watches it wander
about their courtyard or roof, and later sees it go through the entire process,
from sheep to meat to table, each of the steps in between visible for all to
see.
Most Americans, on the other hand, have no idea where the
meat on their plate might have come from. Was it from the farm down the road,
just outside the city? Or one of the large farms driven by on the highway,
while driving across the state to visit friends? Or, if bought in a typical
supermarket with typical packaging, it could have come from anywhere – California , Ohio , Nebraska . Generally, we
don’t know and frankly do not care. What’s more, the processed, neatly packaged
and ready-to-cook pieces of meat so many of us buy are devoid of anything that
might even remind us that those tasty morsels even came from an animal in the
first place – no bones, fat, or skin, for us. Just the pieces that I want to
eat please, the tastiest, easiest pieces to eat. As children, we likely
wouldn’t even be able to tell that those chicken tenders or burger patties were
made from animals, if we weren’t told so. I’m focusing on the extreme examples
here, I know, and there are plenty of people who still get their meat from a
local butcher or raise their own animals. Kudos to them, truly. But I’m
speaking on the level of norms here, of trends and the behavior of the vast
majority; and on that level, our connection between our meat and its source is
terribly, glaringly broken.
The differences in the two cultures’ approaches to meat is
evident at every meal, from preparation to portion sizes (the amount in a
typical tagine to be shared by a family here, underneath all of the vegetables,
is about the size of a single portion at an American restaurant) to eating
habits. Moroccans eat every piece of the meat they prepare – the flesh, the
fat, everything, right down to sucking the marrow out of the bones at the end
of the meal. By contrast, I often find myself struggling here with a piece of
meat given to me, not sure what is what or how to navigate around the parts I
don’t want to eat. I simply have no idea what to do with meat that isn’t
pre-cut, separated from all of the parts we would find undesirable in America . To
Moroccans, I must look like I’ve never dealt with real meat before. I’m even
frequently shown up by my 6 year-old host brother, who has no qualms whatsoever
about picking through the pieces and eating meat off the bone. Though my
experience is admittedly a little bit skewed because of my 2 years of
vegetarianism before joining Peace Corps, I’ve heard from other volunteers that
they encounter the same problem.
And so I opted to watch, decided to be a part of the entire
thing, the slaughtering and cleaning and all, if only to take one small step to
right what I found so wrong about the way my culture interacts with the meat. I
realized, sometime during my first 7 months in Morocco , that there was something
deeply strange about my aversion to the butcher shop, my fear of the animal
bodies hanging there, my difficulty with pieces of meat on the bone in the
tagine. I wanted to face that fear, up close and personal, and that’s exactly
what I did, gripping poor Radia’s arm tightly the entire time. Radia and the
other kids, for their part, bounced around the courtyard, casually eating
suckers or taking pictures with their phones. This was all normal to them,
underneath the holiday excitement – like kids watching their parents put up the
Christmas tree or deck the halls with garland in America .
After a little over an hour, we all came inside, and I sat
with Habiba while she cut up the fresh sheep organs, right there on the table
in front of us. As she sliced, I pondered two things: how surprisingly huge the
organs were, for one, and for two, how I was going to have to get up the nerve
to eat them. She cut up the heart, liver, lungs, and I think the spleen, into
little pieces, marinated them briefly in cilantro, parsley, onions, and other
spices, skewered them onto kabobs, and barbecued them, on a small little
open-flame grill, right there in the living room. When it came time to taste
the organs, they handed me a kabob excitedly, eager to see the American
discover the deliciousness of fresh Eid al-Kbir meat. Habiba’s oldest son,
Jawad, who speaks English and sometimes helps me with translating things for
the Dar Chebab, and to whom I had expressed some of my reservations about the
organ meat, looked over at me inquisitively, anxious to see what I thought.
And, to my surprise, the organ meat didn’t taste that much different from
normal meat, aside from an added gamey (perhaps bloody?) taste, especially in
the heart. As in every Moroccan meal, we ate with bread as utensils, and I was
admittedly never so glad to have bread to wrap my food in as that day.
After we had all finished eating (I ate two whole kabobs!
Success!), Habiba wrapped up 5 or 6 kabobs in bread, and sent one of her sons
to deliver them to a family in the neighborhood who could not afford a sheep of
their own. Charity to those in need is a part of every Moroccan holiday, and
this was no exception. Throughout the day, I saw Habiba packaging up cookies
and chunks of meat, all to be given to various children or families in the
neighborhood.
I stayed with the family for the rest of the day, chatting
with visitors that stopped by their house and going over to other families’
houses in the neighborhood to visit them. After a light kaskrot (snack time) of
tea, cookies, and misimn, a bunch of cousins around my age came over, and we
chatted about life while they had a hair-straightening party. It reminded me of
holidays with my mom’s side of my family, all of us younger girls hanging out
in the basement, listening to the Backstreet Boys and gabbing about crushes at
school.
I left at around 8pm, after a full 12 hours with a wonderful
family. They insisted on sending me home with an entire plate of Moroccan
cookies (they loved the chocolate chip cookies, by the way!) AND a leg of lamb,
which I have no idea how to prepare. Because, you know, welcoming me into your
home on the most important holiday of the year, feeding me 3 meals, and
everything else wasn’t enough – no, they had to send me home with food, too! Of
course! Again, I have to say that the generosity of Moroccan families will
never cease to amaze me.
The next morning, I woke at 8:30 to a phone call from
Habiba. She was inviting me back over to their house, to have breakfast with
them and watch the Boujloud in the afternoon. Though exhausted, I of course
went over, happy to spend more time with their family and not wanting to miss
out on any experience the holiday had to offer. Though I probably should have
seen it coming, I was surprised to find that breakfast was more ram meat, on
skewers again, though not any sort of organs this time. I suppose when you
slaughter a ram, no matter how many visitors you welcome into your home, that
is A LOT of meat to go through.
Later that afternoon, I had the pleasure of seeing the
Boujloud, a tradition specific to the region of Morocco where I live, in action in
front of Habiba’s house. It goes like this: Young men wear the dried skin of
the ram they killed the day before like a sort of costume, and run around town
to the beat of drums, scaring any passerby they might encounter. If you want
the Boujloud to stop chasing you, you need to give them a few dirhams, which
they donate to the local mosque. It’s a tradition not too far off from
Halloween and trick-or-treating, when you think about it. The Boujloud in our
neighborhood consisted of about 5 or 6 young men in actual sheep skins, and 15
or so more dressed in other costumes – monsters, bears, a Scream mask – and
they really did look like a group getting ready to go out on Halloween night.
Groups of children approached the street with a mix of delight and fear; they
wanted to see the Boujloud, knew that it was their neighbors and friends behind
the masks, and yet they were scared out of their minds of being chased by them.
I saw what was the official start of the Boujloud, and it went on for days
after l-Eid. If at anytime during the week of l-Eid, you’re walking down the
street and hear the beat of drums nearby, you know the Boujloud are close,
asking for donations in their special way. I admit that a few days later, as I
was going for a walk by myself on the other side of the neighborhood, I heard
the drums from around the corner and took off in the other direction,
irrationally frightened by the thought of coming across them. It was only a few
days before Halloween, and I smiled at the fact that I was getting to see kids
in costumes and even be scared by them, all in a country that doesn’t celebrate
Halloween.
I spent the next few days stopping over for lunch and dinner
at different families’ houses, visiting and eating sheep meat at almost every
meal. Though my mind and heart were sad to see the holiday go at the end of the
week, my stomach was glad for the reprieve. Thankfully, we had some heavy rain
for days after l-Eid ended, the Dar Chebab was thus closed due to flooding in
the roads, and I admittedly spent a few days in my bed, recovering from the
marathon of strange ram meat. Still, it was a small price to pay for rich
cultural experiences, the warmth of a family, and community integration in its
best form.
