life as i know it in this circle of Life: عيد الأضحى

so, living here allowed us the opportunity to experience the Big Eid (عيد الأضحى). in preparation for the Eid many sites, smells, and sounds arrived closer and closer to the big day. this is when Muslim families slaughter a sheep (or another animal) in honor of Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son, Ismael, but instead Allah provided a sheep for him to kill.

the Sunday before the Eid my roomie and I went around town a bit to gather some footage to share with friends and family like you! here you see the delivery guys with a family's sheep. living in a big city, there weren't large sheep souqs (markets) all around like there would be in smaller towns. i am thinking that the family went out to the ranches or farms to pick out a sheep and had an agreement of when it would be delivered.

here you see the sharpening guys. it is if utmost importance to have a selection of sharp, sharp knives. the knife to slit the throat of the lamb must be ultra sharp cause you are to only take one stroke across the neck as mandated in Islam. so, these guys set up shop all around town in order to offer their sharpening services.

then the other popular necessity for this big holiday: the grills and charcoal! since the family now has an entire sheep to eat, they get creative in how to prepare it. suprisingly they love making the meat into brochettes (skewers) on the grill. it is amazing how much charcoal smoke we smelled and saw after the day of the Big Eid! imagine every house on/in your block/apartment building grill sheep!

so, then we came back to our apartment building to find a couple of guys delivering another sheep for yet another family in our building. we started to smell the hay, their food, the sheep themselves, and of course their bi-products. it felt like we were back at the County Fair 4-H barn:)

then, the big day came: i was invited to join my friend, La, along with her family for the Eid. above is a photo taken from the roof looking down on the sheep for the families in their building. two were for La's family: one for her immediate family and the other for her uncle's family.

below is a shot that i thought captured a lot. here the men were in charge of wrangling the sheep. imagine two sheep being loaded into and out of the back of my Ford Focus hatchback (which is about what happened). and then the kids looking on. some kids are excited and then some are really sad cause they know what will happen to their family's sheep. it is an interesting time.

above is my friend's family's sheep. i wasn't allowed to photograph the actual slaughtering, which i was okay with. but it was interesting. the other sheep was in the yard and they covered it with a tablecloth to keep the other sheep from seeing the other sheep getting the knife. this was done out of respect is what i was told.then, after the sheep was slaughtering the skinning, the gutting, and cleaning happened like clockwork. everyone had a job and knew exactly what to do to quickly prepare the insides first as the meat would be prepared later as it is mandatory to leave the meat until all the blood drips from the corpse. above is the table of labor: preparing the brochettes of organs. my friend is cutting up rolls of fat (which was laid out to dry) that will be wrapped around pieces of lung, liver, or heart. salt and cumin are spices of choice during this holiday.another shot of the table. now, you can see the grill, too. they would put the organ on the grill whole to cook it through and then taken off to be cut up and then wrapped up with fat and then put back on the grill. mmm good.seriously nothing is wasted. the legs/hooves and head are also cut off and then roasted over a fire to get rid of the hair. they must be cleaned and then are saved for the next Friday's couscous. i actually helped clean a head (which was pretty intense) and then later ate some sheep head couscous on that following Friday! Fear Factor here I come:)this was later that night when we grilled up again some brochettes. what i thought was interesting was that they grilled inside the home! it was super smoky. the meat was pretty delicious overall. i stayed the night and then the next day we had even more sheep meat of course.