Monday, November 14, 2011

6.11.11 Waiting for the big day

or about holiday preparation again…




Today a cow arrived to Yassine’s parents’ house. It inhabited the bathroom together with my sheep and was tied to the wall, so that it does not run away, in case the door (which is just a wooden board and an old satellite dish) is battered down. The animals live on the last, third floor of the house, so it was quite a challenge to drag them up the stairs. The cow is becoming fierce, takes over control in the bathroom, takes away the food of my sheep and pushes my sheep aside, back to the corner and doesn’t let it move. The poor sheep keeps on bleating and every now and then claims humbly its privileges.


On the streets there is another interesting phenomenon: special primitive stands with feed, vessels for meat preparation, coil or knife sharpener appeared in the middle-class or rich districts among beautiful houses or along crowded streets. Next to the stand there’s a small tent for the sellers who come here from nearby villages or poorest districts and stay here for 1 or 2 nights. All the products are placed before the tent, no one even hides them when it’s dark. A customer may appear any time during the day or night. And because nights are cold now, the fire lighten next to or even inside the tent is an indispensible part of the little camp.

In the well-off district people rather don’t dare to kill their animals by themselves or prepare some parts of the animals and take care of their skin. So the sellers stay outside until the Festival and smoke or grill sheep hooves or heads for them. To kill an animal the citizens hire butchers who walk between the houses early in the holiday morning, offering aloud their services. Inhabitants welcome them with joy, very often take them to their families who also need a butcher. It is also possible to phone a butcher a day before the festival, but this practice is not really common.

Poor families have to take care of everything with their own hands, from bringing an animal, to its sacrificing and preparing its meat, whether they’re brave enough to do it (especially sacrifice it) or not…

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