Officially, Eid is over. Unofficially, it will live on in our hearts until death.

First of all, remind me to tell you about Moroccan music videos. Or better yet, Lebanese ones.

Second, Eid was great.

Part I
PREFACE
We all slept over on Tuesday night, so we wouldn't miss any of the festivities in the morning. Kristen and Erin got in late from their four-days-in-the-Sahara-for-$120. I spent most of the evening watching Arabic music videos and eating whatever was left in the kitchen by Imane's family. My new favorite thing about this place is just using bread to eat out of the pot. So Imane's brother Kamal and I huddled and fought over the same pot of what I think was refried white beans...? Maybe. He and I argued in the kitchen for sometime, excited to be using our new found second languages; Kamal knows about as much English as I do derija and has a similar sense of humor. I do an excellent impression of him speaking english.
We slept in the apartment upstairs (the family owns the whole building) and it was by far the prettiest room I have seen in morocco. The boys brought us tea and Imane made a weird soupy desert thing. Milk, water, noodles, sugar, pepper. It was shockingly good. I ate it out of the pot and with our bellies full, we fell asleep.

And woke up promptly at prayer call. 6am.
We did the usual breakfast thing, we were treated SO nicely by the family, that it was kind of weird for me. I did a lot of helping out in the kitchen, which earned me the nickname 'morgahadga' a combo of my name and the derija word for 'hard worker.' Almost immediately after breakfast, as the men trickled home from the mosque, Simo (oldest brother) brought in the second Sheep. *The first had been killed the day before.*
KILLING.
We gathered in the courtyard/laundry area and without any ritual, the boys held down the sheep while dad slit its throat. He muttered a 'bismillah' but I didn't hear him. So then we watched while the thing bled to death, jerking and making gurgling noises for about a minute. As the blood poured out, the younger sister Nawal mopped it towards the drain in the floor. It was kindof amazing to watch the life drain out of something that big. How the ribs continued to seize after it was clearly bled out.
Haj (dad) severed the head completely and set in on the floor next to yesterdays head, which had already been charred and placed in a bucket.
SKINNING
They made a slit just under the skin on one of the hind legs and pushed it open more with what I think was a bamboo shoot. Then Haj put his mouth to it and blew. It sounds ridiculous, but steadily the animal's skin was blown up like a balloon. Each brother took a turn and none of us could stop laughing. Then they hit it like a drum a few times to make sure it was taught I guess, flipped it upside down, so its inflated body was resting on its decapitated neck and the blood squished and bubbled out. After pushing down and leaning on it to make sure it was in a stable position, they began to cut. They sliced just under the skin, starting around the sheep's anus, tail and legs. Each boy held either a leg or the tail and they pushed and pulled the hide off. Pushing with their fists like they were kneading dough, tearing the hide from its muscle.
DISEMBOWELMENT
Every house is equipped with a large S hook on somewhere on a wall, either in a courtyard or on the roof, this is for hanging the sheep by its hind leg. They chopped off all the feet but the one it would hang by and made a large deep cut into the abdomen. Feet and feet of intestines unravelled unto the floor. The organs, now removed, sat in buckets joined by the previous sheeps' cold refrigerated organs. Nawal cleaned them thouroughly while we watched, I'm not sure how she got shafted with that task, it was the most disgusting part of the whole ordeal. Hearts and lungs are never as big as they should be. One friend told me that their family inflated the lungs before cooking them and that that made them look more pinkish and lung-y than than the brown livery blobs they really were. I dont know where it came from, but both sheep produced a thick, lacey veil of fat from somewhere in their guts apx. 2ft square. Nawal hung them on the laundry line to dry.
THE STOMACH
The emptying of the stomach is pungent and putrid. There are few smells like that of partially digested sheep meal. The first stomach was'nt so bad. The second, got worse and worse the closer to the bottom she got. There was this huge blue bucket and she just dumped glob after yellow glob until it was almost full. We watched from above where we thought the stench couldnt reach us. Touche.
Then she emptied its colon. I swear to god, the colon. I'm pretty sure that even god couldnt have stopped me from just throwing that one out. Nawal hooked up the intestines to the faucet and just ran water through them four or five times to get the left over feces out.

Well, thats enough for tonight. The lurid part is over, i've only the eating of the liver and tangia to cover in Part II.