Hey guys, it's been awhile. I've been busy running all over the country, celebrating holidays, and other valid excuses for not writing. But alas, here's a long one:

So one of the more frustrating parts of transactions here involves a little non-existant coin called the Rial. I don't know where it came from, when it stopped being used, or why on earth people still think in terms of a currency that doesn't exist, but alas, the Rial haunts me. The Rial is equivalent to 1/20th of a dirham, the basic unit here. It's approximately half a cent. Nothing costs "a Rial" in fact most things cost hundreds or thousands of Rials… yet people still tell me prices in Rials. So basically the onus is on me to quickly divide whatever price they give me by 20 to figure out how many Dirhams I owe them… this is particularly fun when the price isn't evenly divisible by 20. Just one more thing to slow down everything about life here- on the spot Rial conversions.

I live at 13 Mouwahidine Street. So do about 1500 other people. Nope, my apartment building only contains about 500 peeps, the other thousand are divided between the OTHER TWO 13 MOUWAHIDINE'S! Yup, almost every building on my street is numbered 13 sort of depleting the entire purpose of numbering buildings. When I tell someone how to get to my apt I literally say "it's the third #13 on Rue Mouwahidine". My friend lives at 37 rue Azegza which is surrounded on each side by buildings numbered 64 and 3. It makes me feel like I'm taking crazypills.

Best Moroccan proverb ever "The poop finds his sister in the ocean". There are regional variations on this one which include "the poop searches for his sister for 100 years". Apparently it is analogous to"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree".

So Noah is now in Morocco with me so that means I am living with two Veggies. His 'trying to be a vegan in Morocco' adventures have been going pretty well so far. The communal eating style allows him to shove the meat over to my part of the dish so I can discreetly chow on it while no one is looking. He's also getting really good at eating just the potatoes out of meat tajines. My roommate Alex is also a veggie and her luck has not been so great. Not only does asking "does this have meat in it" never work because everyone works with a different definition of meat but also most don't consider "small bits of meat" actual meat. Worst was that for her birthday one of our Moroccan friends had his mom make a huge pastilla (read: delicious meatful concoction that takes FOREVER to prepare) as a gift to her, unaware of her vegginess. It was one of those situations where there is no way around it, it would be incredibly offensive if she didn't eat it, so being the little trooper she was took a big bite and had her first meat in 5 years… and indigestion to follow.

We did a little Moroccan Christmas here which included lots of substitutions for actual traditions but the net effect was pretty jolly. I used hammam gloves (exfoliater mits) as Xmas stockings and made a 'fireplace' to hang them on out of three candles. No firetroubles to boot. I hung mint sprigs from the doorway instead of mistletoe and there was an attempt at virgin eggnog but it sorta turned out like an omelet and had to be quickly escorted to the garbage chute.

Then came Eid Kabir, that holiday when for the week proceeding everything smells like sheep. What's worse, it rained a lot so everything smelled like wet sheep. I think several of my neighbors kept their sheep inside their apartments (b/c apparently sheep theft is a big problem). These aren't your little county fair cute sheep. They are large, dirty, smelly, and nast. They even have really long tails which I'd never seen before but honestly don't spend that much time near sheep ass in order to be confident that it's an abnormality. The details are in the previous entry but I must mention a little phenomenon called a sheep balloon and tell you that we named my friends' sheep Fido b/c when it was skinned and drying in the corner of the house it looked like a sleeping pitbull (with no head).

Eid Kabir

Leaving my apartment in the morning I was struck by the intense smell of sheep. I thought to myself how very different the smell of stinky, rain-soaked, dirty sheep would be compared to the delicious aroma of the cooked sheep meat to come. The streets of Rabat were deserted except for a few men walking around with very large knives and rubber boots, presumably butchers.

When arriving at my friend’s home we took a peek in the bathroom to see the star of the show, the sheep. He was dirty and smelly and really not at all appetizing. His tail was long unlike the cropped button tails of fluffy white sheep in children’s books.

We ate breakfast and I would have eaten substantially less if I had known how much food was to come. All at once, the butcher arrived and set into motion a fast stream of events that started with the struggle of dragging the sheep down the stairs and ended with carrying it back up the stairs, minus the skin, feet, head, and a few quarts of blood.

In the backyard the butcher pinned down the sheep as another man held its legs together and with a quick prayer and one fast motion, crimson blood was spraying everywhere. The sheep kicked for a few minutes as the mother used her squeegee to get the blood off the stone patio and into the garden (I wonder if it works as a fertilizer?).

The first thing was the removal of the head which twisted around 360 degrees before coming off. Then the legs were broken off at the lowest joint. Next the butcher cut a small hole in the skin near the thigh and proceeded to blow air in the space between the sheep’s skin and meat. He made a sheep balloon! Everyone pounded on the inflated sheep as if it were a drum. Finally a rope was looped between the leg bones and the sheep was hoisted up and hung to be skinned. Quick light movements of the sharp blade brought the skin off quite easily and when it got difficult toward the neck area, the butcher used his foot for leverage.

After being skinned it was difficult to tell that the carcass in front of me used to be a sheep. It could have been a goat, dog, pig, or small donkey for all I knew. It seemed so much smaller without the thick wool.

A quick slit down the middle revealed a large sack of a stomach filled with black liquid which went immediately into a bucket. Next the intestines were uncoiled and set in another bucket where they were filled with water and cleaned out. The kidneys were sliced out of the back wall of the carcass and then heart looked surprising small except for the large hollow aorta. Once the abdomen cavity was empty water was poured through the carcass to clean it out. Then all the buckets, filled with various organs, were brought upstairs followed by the sheep carcass which was carried delicately like an infant.

Clean up was intense as there was lots of blood and dirt from the animal but the apartment was thoroughly disinfected after a few minutes.

In the kitchen the preparation of the liver and heart was under way. Onions were sliced, coriander chopped, and oil drizzeled over bite-sized pieces. The fat (which had been stretching outside the window) was brought in and looked like a large spider’s web. It was cut into strips and wrapped around the pieces of liver and then put on a skewer. The grill was full of white hot coals and the liver was precooked first and then when the skewer with the fat was put over the flame the whole room smoked up. Even with the windows open it was burning my eyes. However, it was all worth it when I got to finally eat the kabobs.

With fresh bread made that morning I ate piece after piece of heart and then moved on to the boulefef (liver wrapped in fat). The fat was no longer visible as it had mostly cooked away but the taste was still present. I was given a small piece of spleen which was well done and it reminded me of the crispy part of a well cooked hamburger. With one skewer in hand with just a few pieces left on it, the mother insisted that I trade it in for a different full skewer with meat that was ‘still hot’. Because of that, the number of bare skewers stacked in front of me at the end of the meal was not an accurate representation of how much food I consumed. Thankfully there were salads to eat so I could feel somewhat healthy as I ate skewer after skewer of meat.

Before I knew it the meal was over and it almost seemed anticlimactic. It reminded me of the moment on Christmas morning after all the presents are open and everyone is sitting among piles of wrapping paper thinking “what now?” We finished lunch and there was a whole day of Eid left which resembled any other day. The adults took a nap and we sat in the salon talking about music and cultures and language, our stomachs full of meat. In the corner, the skinned sheep was laid down on a blanket to dry out and it looked just like a sleeping dog, so we named him “Fido”.