Laid Kibir Preview…

1/9/2006 9:08 PM Laid Kibir Preview…

Wednesday is Laid Kibir, the biggest holiday on the Moroccan calendar. Agdz is full of students and family members home from all the big cities (Fes, Marakesh, Casablanca, Rabat) to share the holiday with their families. The souq last week was packed with shepherds and sheep, and Moroccans wading through, picking up one sheep or another to gauge its value. My family bought two. Every family buys at least one and keeps in their courtyard or roof, feeding it hay and scraps in anticipation of Laid Kibir when they will kill the sheep. The significance is a symbolic reminder of Abraham (our common spiritual ancestor) on Mt. Sinai, who had taken his son Isaac up onto the mountain to sacrifice him, in obedience to God, and was miraculously provided with the ram in the thicket. (At least that’s what I’ve learned so far that it represents.) Although celebrating holidays of the Old Testament is not necessary for a Christian, it is truly interesting to be here and watch them pay tribute to this part of our spiritual history.

On the practical side … the approach of these feast has built a little fear in me. For some reason I have struggled with the issue of meat in this country … having already eaten sheep stomach (which I certainly do not care for), camel, cow brain, all kinds of fish with bones and skin, and who knows what else, I get a grip of fear in my stomach whenever approaching the dinner table. I don’t know what kind of meat is at the center of the tagine, covered by vegetables. (Moroccans eat from one communal dish, with their hands, using torn pieces of bread and fingers as silverware. They start with the vegetables and/or couscous which surround a center piece of meat of some sort.) Today I left early. My family said they were going to kill the first of the sheep (I’m still not sure why they bought two). My friend told me he had helped kill the sheep at the doorway. I returned home later in the afternoon to make brownies, dreading what I would find in the kitchen. I crept in, saw nothing suspicious, opened the refrigerator door to find a bowl of innards and sheep stomach lining. I opened a container to find a liver and other organs. My father wandered in and grinned, opening the kitchen window to the courtyard, bidding that I peer out. So that was where it was… I leaned my head out and sure enough, there hung a sheep carcass… a sheep I had just pet the day before. It got worse. I shut out the thoughts that I would soon be eating those innards and that carcass and set about making my brownies. A few minutes later after some strange behavior by my host sisters, I turned around to confront a sheep face. I screamed and backed into a corner. Still had eyes and ears and fur.. looked just like it did when it was alive, but the neck was a bloody severed mess. Nawal taunted me with it and came near… I was backed in a corner and waived my hands, “No, don’t, don’t come near!” Now I suppose many Americans who have grown up on a farm or worked in a meat factory are more than well acquainted with these type of scenes, but they are rather traumatizing to me still. My host mother laughed and picked up a hoof and severed leg out of the bowl, again still with fur and dirt on it. They finally took it away, but I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see a sheep head staring at me. I asked what they were going to do with it, fearing an answer I already knew. "We’re going to burn it with the skin and fur on and then put it in a couscous or something." Couscous..? You mean we’re going to eat that with couscous? "Yes, don’t you eat them in the states?" No. "What do you do with the heads?" I don’t know but I never see them, just nice steaks or a chicken breast. No innards either. "What? What do you do with all the innards? You don’t eat them?" No! I laughed. Maybe they feed them to animals or something, I don’t know, I never see them.

These were new thoughts to them, people who didn’t eat the whole animal, just as the idea of eating the sheep head and innards was grossing me out. We haven’t had dinner yet tonight. I’m rather terrified of what it will be. And it should only get worse over the next couple days.. they’re killing another sheep, so there will be plentiful innards and sheep heads and such to suck on. (That’s another thing here that grosses me out.. whenever we finish consuming the meat on any given day, my host mother and sisters, with sticky fingers will sit, sucking on bones until their completely bare, and suck the marrow of the center of the bones. Eating fat is bad enough for me.)

Thankfully Laid Kibir also means less pressure to do something productive (not that I don’t want to, just finding someway of being/feeling productive is very difficult at this point) as everyone is on holiday this entire week. On the day of Laid Kibir I have many invites to visit friends and share the holiday with them. This is something that I really enjoy about holidays here. Everyone is out on the streets, visiting each other, walking to and fro each other’s homes, eating tons of cookies and goodies. Tomorrow my host sisters will probably be making lots of cookies, so that part sounds like a lot of fun.

Oooh the fun times we have here in Morocco.