Everything, as in EVERYTHING, in capitals and
underlined 3 times, is closed in Tetouan, Morocco, during the Festival of the
Sheep. I know this first hand. I went there and saw that it was so.
We are waiting for the wind to shift. We spent two weeks
fixing up the boat during which time the winds were fantastic but now that we
have finished all the work we cannot leave because the winds are horrible (40
knots right in our face) and so we hop back and forth across the strait and we wait.
I was going to walk across the border into Morocco and go to
the closest little village but the tourist information agent convinced me to
take a 30 minute taxi ride ($2) to the city. ‘Great market,’ she said,
‘fantastic shopping, excellent restaurants.’ Perhaps so, but not, for sure,
today. Today, everything was shut, every single market stall, every single shop,
every single café, everything. It was the festival of the sheep.
On the other hand, it was a great day to be a tourist in the
city. Everyone was happy, cheerful, and talkative. I was beckoned aside. I was
told about the Muslin celebration that remembers the time when Abraham, ordered
by God to kill his son, obeyed, then found that God had substituted a sheep at
the last moment. I was introduced to family members. I was given mint-tea to
drink. I was encouraged to take photos. And, of course, sheep were being killed
left, right, and center. Old men were dragging them out of cars and up
alleyways into garages and front halls where they were slaughtered, their heads
and feet cut off, and their fleeces pulled off in a single tubular piece, young
boys were dispatched to carry the hides to the corner to be sold, teenagers
gathered up the heads and feet and roasted them outdoors on metal skewers on
makeshift BBQ’s, and young men strutted proudly around the city wearing blood
covered aprons and wielding large knives and machetes. Girls and women, I have
to assume, were indoors cooking all manner of wonders. Everyone had the day off
work. Relatives from far and wide had returned home for the festival. Feasts
were being prepared. Music blared. The air positively hummed with joy and the
streets literally ran with blood.
Definitely another amazing day. Way more interesting than,
for example, supply teaching.
(And I almost got a photo of myself with two wizards.)
