Training

Thursday, January 20, 2005 10:54 PM

Just so you know, the reason I did not post today was because of Islam. Specifically, the feast of Aid el Kebir.

I must say, I’ve been able to learn precious little about the feast, other than its enormous significance and the custom of every household slaughtering a sheep. I witnessed this firsthand.

Well, not the slaughtering so much as its aftermath. When the rain finally ceased in the late afternoon, I headed into the heart of the medina, wandering through its twisted streets without any direction in mind. I came across countless spots where some poor ram or ewe had met its fate. The spots were typically marked by copious amounts of sheep excrement, and hardly any blood. Oddly enough, the gallons you’d expect must have been mopped up or captured during the process. Often I would only find a single drop to alert me to the rite that had occurred there.

I did see plenty of evidence for one custom, though. Apparently the head of the sacrificial lamb, or ram I should think, is preserved. But to avoid its immediate decay and the resultant stink, families send the heads off to a character with a singular job. Armed with a blowtorch, an old man chars the outside of the head and the brain stem so that the stink will remain inside for a time. This I did witness firsthand, standing awestruck at the plastic bags full of rams’ heads and the old man happily going about his working rendering each into charcoal before passing it off to a small child to run back to the proper family. Throughout the medina, I periodically captured the acrid scent of burning sheep’s hair, providing ample evidence that the one man I witnessed was not alone in this task. Fascinating.