mabrook l'eid! CAREFUL!!!!! GRAPHIC DEAD SHEEP PHOTOS!!!

craziest day ever.
ever.

so, my student fatiha invited me to her house for this holiday, l'eid. basically, its like thanksgiving except with sheep instead of turkey. everyone goes home to celebrate with family, and then kill a sheep and eat it. but they have to kill the sheep themselves. its just part of the fun.

first of all, it was so nice of her to invite me in the first place. its really a family thing. so i arrived promptly at 9 am. it took me about half an hour to find a taxi, and my program director, mohammed, nicely waited outside with me at 8:15 am and gave the cab driver directions. so i get there ($4 for a cab all the way across the city), and her mother is still at the mosque for morning prayers. her youngest sister, ouda, is also there. she is nine and sooooooo cute! we prepared breakfast and watched tv. fatiha made ouda turn on an english station and we watched that golf movie with matt damon for a while. anyway, her mother came back and we sat down for breakfast.

the thing about eating with moroccans is that you cant not eat something, and they hate to waste food. so i ate a weird pasta/milk soup, then a shredded wheat ish pancake with honey. then there were these round spongy bread things with honey. then there was tea and little cookies. some of them i brought, some of them they already had. mohammed told me that people bring something sweet to eat with tea instead of flowers, so i brought a bunch of cute cookies from the bakery down the street. anyway, after eating what felt like everything in the apartment, we waited for the sheep to arrive. it was like 2 hours late. but we got to watch the king kill some sheep on tv. anyway, we went up to the roof, where apparently everyone in rabat kills their sheep. i could see people on rooftops all around us. took lots of pictures. in the street below a bunch of young guys were burning the heads and around the fire was a pile of horns.

finally the sheep arrived. he was really cute. i couldnt watch, so i put my camera on video mode and told ouda to film it. the 9 year old girl had no problem with two guys holding a sheep down and slitting its throat. (note: the difference between tuer and gorger.) but i looked as soon as it was over and took some great sheep with a slit throat twitching pictures. i guess you couldnt really see the twitching in the pictures. so then ouda, who looooved my camera, kept pulling me closer to the sheep while the men cut off the skin and the head and the front legs. then they strung it up by the back legs from the laundry line and took out the innards. dinner time!

so we went back into the apartment after the slaughter and started preparing the food. they roasted some part of it on a barbecue like thing like kebabs which we ate first with bread. gamey, but not bad.

then came the interesting part. i kept asking if i could help (because i'm stupid like that) and fatiha said i could make the salad. didnt take too long. can i do anything else fatiha? sure! these innards are really slippery, can you hold them taut while i slice them into pieces? umm, ok. this is strange, what is it? the intestines! the lungs! stomach lining! the throat! and we're going to be eating all of this? well, try everything once i guess.

so they put all of this stuff in a pot and then they boil it, put a bunch of stuff in, and boil it some more. fatiha is asking me about every half hour if i'm hungry and i keep thinking that i'm still full from breakfast, but i get the distinct impression that she thinks i'm just being polite.

while all of this is going on, i was playing with ouda. we were pretty much best friends before the sheep even arrived, and then we played hand clapping games and danced around the living room. she's an excellent dancer. then fatiha puts on a video of her sister's wedding, which was in may. the wedding is like nothing i've ever seen! the bride has 6 different dresses and she sparkles (literally) in all of them. the music was incredible and she's being lifted by 4 men while sitting in this little gold seat with a roof and smiling and waving with her henna'd hands. the music was so fun and there were lots of shots of fatiha dancing that she actually got up with ouda and started dancing! then they pulled me up (leeeeeeeze!) and started teaching me some moroccan dance moves and we were all dancing in her living room while her mother clapped on the couch! there is something to be said for a big holiday with only women in attendance.

finally the innards are ready for consumption. they are served in a bowl and we all gather round with bread to eat with our hands. the stew part is really quite good. still has the sheepy flavor, but tasty with the bread. i'll be honest, the stomach lining wasnt bad. the intestines were pretty good too. the lungs pretty much made me gag. and after trying everything two or three times i was pretty much at my strange texture threshold. luckily, i ate enough to please fatiha and convince her that she's a great cook (which she is, that stuff was pretty edible). we ended the meal, as always in morocco, with clementines, oranges (which in arabic is limon) and apples. moroccans have things like cookies and cake with tea. dessert is always fruit.

everyone was really tired (after eating a sheep) and so i said i should head home. i was perfectly happy to hail another $4 cab, but fatiha caller her boyfriend who lives nearby to drive me home. she said i had time to freshen up and go to the bathroom before he arrived, and when i went into the bathroom a very important questions was answered for me. where do they keep the sheep carcass, balls hanging down, empty rib cage, blood dripping? thats right, in the shower!

all in all it was an amazing day! it was so great for fatiha to invite me into her family for one of the biggest holidays, and she had only met me 4 times. now its like i'm part of the family. when i was getting ready to leave i told fatiha how this was so amazing for me and she said that i was a wonderful guest and made their holiday better! she wants to take me to visit her mother and sister in their home town near fes. i had to navigate the entire day with french (and the 3 arabic phrases i know) and it was fine. and seriously, when in my life am i ever again going to have the chance to celebrate l'eid with a moroccan family on the roof of a nice downtown apartment building?

AND NOW... hey, they're kinda gross, but its another culture, ya know? these are some dead sheep pics, so dont scroll down if you dont want to see.