Casa Loud and Casa Quiet

Yesterday was the big, big holiday, Eid al-Adha, the holiest feast of the Islamic calendar. I've written about it here before, too. Kind of like Americans obsess over turkeys on Thanksgiving, sheep are the distracting center of this holy day. Yesterday was all loud prayer and sheep slaughter in the morning, and all quiet fires and cooking throughout the afternoon.

Margaret and I stole around the block looking for a few sheep scenes. As we walked, we avoided the swinging machetes of men whose function all day was butchery. If the machetes weren't enough to identify them, their clothes were covered in drying sheep's blood (we assume), and they wore huge, satisfied smiles.

We also found merry gentlemen on the street corners, burning the skin off of sheep heads, cooking the cheeks and brains for later. All this is done with a similar ease as I recall the men in my family going out to fix something on a car after the Thanksgiving meal. Most sit or stand while one or two does something useful to the task. The difference in Morocco is that no one is holding a beer. But here are those men.

Cool guys burning sheep heads.

Later in the day, I was visiting a neighborhood outside the city, and I don't know how common this is, but some children had dressed up in the fresh sheep skins, and were dancing and singing for tips. It looked and smelled so strange. This photo makes it look like The End has come, but in person they were not the least bit intimidating.

Weirdo neighborhood kids after the Eid feast.

The feast having lasted all day and late into last night, Casablanca was a sleeping child at 8:30 this morning. As I walked home from breakfast with Margaret I realized I had never walked more peacefully through the streets. I opened the gate to our villa, and the sun was just beginning to shine on the roses in Habiba's garden. It smelled like heaven come down. The wind whipped up some dried bougainvillea petals on the walkway, and I heard a child laughing on the rooftop apartment of the mosque overhead. It was the sweet kind of laugh where you just know someone is tickling him.

Habiba is my landlady, and she keeps the most beautiful, healthy roses.

My heart is extra light knowing that the poor of the city are eating well this week, because families who can afford it buy not one but two sheep to slaughter, and give up to half the meat to the needy. Beggars are invited inside. The Kingdom come.

In other news...

• Margaret leaves for Jordan today; and what a wonderful time it was to laugh and chat freely while keeping her from accomplishing her schoolwork. Maggie is a friend from Lancaster, visiting Morocco between semesters in Jordan. And this is us holding Mexican flags at an American-style burger joint. 

Now you are a bit of two of my homes, Maggie!, Lancaster and Casablanca!

• With the holiday behind us, my students will be coming back to the city in time for the second week of school, making this Wednesday the de facto first day of classes.