Justine, 22 ans.
If you ask me where I experienced my first real culture shock, I don’t think of an airport or a tourist attraction. I think of a courtyard in Rabat, a sheep tied to a post, and the smell of burnt wool that was still hanging in the air the next morning. I came to Morocco for my studies, and I knew I would be there for Eid al-Kbir — what I didn’t know was how much this holiday would reshape my understanding of the word “family.”
Eid al-Adha, locally known as Eid al-Kbir (“the big Eid”), commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son on God’s command, before a ram was substituted at the last moment. It’s the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar, alongside Eid al-Fitr, and the whole day revolves around the sacrifice of an animal — usually a sheep — and the sharing of its meat. For someone who had never lived through a religious holiday in a majority-Muslim country, this was a string of firsts: my first time away from home for something this significant, and my first time being welcomed into the intimacy of a Moroccan household for an event that goes far beyond a simple festive meal.
The Days Before Eid
It all starts well before the actual day. Two or three weeks ahead of time, the streets change shape: sheep start showing up everywhere — on sidewalks, in the back of carts, sometimes even on a fourth-floor balcony. The livestock markets fill up, prices get negotiated loudly, and every family has its own strategy: some buy early to have more choice, others wait until the last week hoping prices will drop. Prices, in any case, only seem to climb higher every year: this time, a decent sheep cost close to €500, a serious sum for most households, especially after a few years of drought that have made livestock scarcer and more expensive across the country.
In the house that hosted me, the sheep didn’t actually arrive until the evening before Eid — four of them in total, tied up together on the terrace: two for the family, and two more for the neighbors. That same evening, I went out to see them and ended up petting one for a while, which probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do given what was coming the next morning. Meanwhile, everyone was also out buying new clothes — wearing something new on Eid is a strong tradition, especially for children — and the house got cleaned from top to bottom, with the knives and spices pulled out, checked, and sharpened one last time.
Fasting on the Day of Arafa
The day before Eid is the Day of Arafa — the day pilgrims on Hajj gather on Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia. For those who stay home, this day is traditionally marked by a voluntary fast, strongly recommended though not obligatory, said to wipe out the sins of the past year and the year ahead. Since I had converted to Islam myself, this wasn’t just a custom I was observing from the outside — I fasted that day too, for the same reasons as everyone else in the house. I was struck by the particular mood of that day: quieter than the others, almost suspended, as if everyone were holding their breath before the whirlwind of the next morning.
Eid Day
The Morning: Prayer and the Sacrifice
That morning, the household heads off in different directions. We all got up early, around 7:30, and some of the men got dressed — djellaba or new suit — and headed to the mosque for the Eid prayer, often in a group with neighbors and extended family. I went along too, with a cousin from the family that was hosting me, being invited to join her rather than left behind made the whole morning feel less like watching someone else’s tradition from the outside, and more like actually being part of it.As soon as the prayer was over, everything sped up. Before any of that began, I went back to see the sheep one more time — the same one I’d petted the night before — which, looking back, probably wasn’t the easiest way to prepare myself for what came next. The sheep is usually sacrificed in the courtyard or on the terrace, and it’s mostly the men’s job — the father of the family, sometimes helped by a random butcher brought in for households that don’t have anyone experienced enough to do it themselves. When the moment actually came, the smell of blood was overwhelming, and I couldn’t bring myself to watch — I chose to look away, and I don’t think I could have done otherwise even if I’d tried.
Burning the Head, Cutting the Meat, Sharing It
Then comes a step I genuinely hadn’t anticipated: burning the sheep’s head. Using a flame — a blowtorch or burning straw, depending on the family — the remaining wool and hair gets singed off before the head is cooked, considered a delicacy by many. The smell that comes off it, sharp and smoky, has stuck in my memory almost as vividly as the images themselves. Meanwhile, the butchering begins: skinning, separating the cuts, setting the liver aside for boulfaf — that iconic dish eaten on the morning of Eid, liver wrapped in caul fat and grilled, which the whole family shares first, standing around the fire, almost like a ritual in its own right.
The afternoon is devoted to sorting and packing the meat. Tradition recommends splitting it roughly into thirds: one third for the household itself, one third for relatives, friends, and guests, and one third set aside as Sadaqa — charity — for neighbors or families who couldn’t afford a sheep of their own. In practice, the meat in our house ended up labeled bag by bag on the table: some for immediate cooking, some dried and salted for the weeks ahead — the famous gueddid — and a clearly separate batch set aside for Sadaqa. That act of sharing, far from being a side note, felt like the real heart of the day: the celebration doesn’t close in on itself, it opens outward, toward others.
The Family, All Together
While the men handle most of the physical work around the sheep, the women are running an equally demanding operation in parallel: welcoming the extended family as they arrive throughout the day, managing several rounds of meals, handing out Eidiya to the kids — that small sum of money given on the holiday — and making sure no one leaves hungry. The house gradually fills up with aunts, uncles, cousins, and the conversations blend into the clatter of pots and pans.
What I Took Away From It
This first Eid taught me something I couldn’t have learned from a book: the line between the sacred and the everyday is almost nonexistent here. The religious act, the manual labor, the shared meal, and the attention paid to those who have less all sit side by side, with no apparent hierarchy. And in the middle of all of it, as a foreign guest, what struck me most was how naturally I was folded into every step — as if my presence wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, when for me, it was everything.