Next week-end is Tabaski.
Tabaski is the Senegalese name of Aid el Kebir, the mutton feast. In honor of the supreme sacrifice that Abraham was ready to offer, killing his son because God asked him to, Muslims today sacrifice a mutton.
Just like all traditional holidays, Tabaski comes with its load of expectations (normally unsatisfied), expenses, joy and pain.
Muttons are outrageously expensive (two thirds of an average salary but it can go up to ten times that). Lots of families go into debt because, still today, it is unthinkable to avoid the sacrifice. It is partly a genuine religious reason, and partly a social/traditional: nobody wants to be seen as a misbeliever or a miserable who can’t afford to honor God.
Tabaski muttons are sold pretty much anywhere, on the street, no matter where. Wherever there is a n open space, a clearing on the concrete, a traffic island, under a bridge, a month before the holiday you can see sheperds and their herds popping up overnight. They sleep with their animals under patched up tents.
Truth be told, they do not sleep much. If it is during the day that people window-shop to spot the whitest and most perfect mutton, it is at night that real deals happen.
Generally speaking, Senegalese people choose the night to be doing most of the activities necessary for survival and especially those that imply money transactions and goods transfer. The fewer eyes see you buy, pay, move stuff, the better.
In the month before the holiday it is not uncommon to hear, on any given morning, a bleating never heard before: the neighbor bought one (or more) sacrificial sheep and brought them over to the rooftop, under cover of darkness.
I used to ask about these animal sounds but people would avoid making eye-contact, embarrassed just as if I asked them if they had already went to the bathroom today.
The choice of the best mutton is based on an array of criteria: size, no visible defects, whiteness of the hair, how graceful the horn spiral is. Those are things that you can’t all have for a reasonable budget.
The moment of the actual purchase is delayed as much as possible, in the hope of finding an almost perfect animal that is also cheap. Prices go up quickly and, the last night before the feast, a short-circuit happens: sellers know that buyers’ time is running out and buyers know that the animals’ value that today is so high, tomorrow, past the feast, will plummet down.
It’s a fight to the death that will be won by the best bluffer.
Buying the mutton (or more than one if your means allow for it) it’s a men’s thing but don’t let yourself be fooled: women haven’t been chit-chatting all the while.
Weeks before the feast, the favorite line to strike up a conversation is: “so, are we preparing the feast?”.
This “preparing the feast” is when women go hunting for the best ingredients and sides for the big day. Some go buy olives 30 km away from home because they are cheaper when you buy in bulk.
Finding the best potatoes and the crispiest salad require observation skills and cooking experience I definitely don’t have, so I was never asked to tag along on the hunt by my sisters in law.
Tabaski is the equivalent of Christmas, Thanksgiving or the Chinese New Year: two thirds of the country is traveling to join their families.
They travel on a variety of vehicles, mostly in ill conditions on routes that are equally ill (the situation has been improving with a highway having finally been built).
People travel and so do sacrificial animals, crammed as best as they can in the trunk or on the roof rack. (Yes, you read it right).
If no more than two animals can travel in a car, the roof rack of a bus is slightly smaller than a plane! Muttons travel strapped to the rack, squeezed onto one another, terrified out of their minds, at a breakneck speed for hours (sometimes ten or more).
Upon arrival, the counting can be different from departure and this is a tragedy. A dead animal can’t be sacrified, of course, but neither can it be eaten (it has not been slaughtered the halal way). The honour of the sacrifice goes down the drain but the burden of the debt to buy the mutton is still there, in all its might.
The other must of Tabaski is a brand new custom-made traditional outfit. In the weeks before the big day, taylors skip their night sleep, the noise of the sewing machines from their workshops is sort of a white noise of which you become aware when it is no longer there, the morning of the big day.
Generally speaking, Senegalese people are used to commit to way more than they can deliver. Taylors in the weeks and days before the special day want to make everyone happy: they take orders for way more than what they can actually make and the morning of they just confess the dress is not ready. And they bow in apology.
Each year, over the meal, I have listened to at least one woman complain about how this year the taylor has not delivered her new dress and she was forced to wear something that had already been seen before. Other women reassure her it’s not a big deal, but you can hear them sigh in relief for not being in her (old) shoes.
Nevermind the stress, the expenses, the anxiety, the missed eliveries…Tabaski is THE MAJOR holiday for Muslims across the world. It falls on the third day of the Pilgrimage to Mecca (one of the five pillars of Islam). The day of the feast the Pilgrims are out in the desert on the Mount Arafat, where the Prophet delivered his first speech. High degree of symbolism there.
One of the things that reconcile me with the idea of a sacrifice is that the animal is carefully shared with the less fortunate. The first round of cooking is for the family but you will see women and children shuffling in and out of the house with gigantic bowls of food the whole afternoon. That food is for poor families in the neighborhood or for the Mosque.
It can also happen that the raw meat is given to someone in sign of appreciation and respect (to someone who has a fridge, which should not be taken for granted). It happened to us to be graciously (and unexpectedly) given a mutton thigh by a neighbor so I have learnt to keep an open slot in the freezer.
Something else that always make me think is that Tabaski is, of course, a Muslim holiday but it is very much loved by Christians too.
My husband has a Christian friend from his old neighborhood, (a neighborhood that has a massive presence of Christians from Capo Verde); this guy has been living in the US for decades now and yet he takes his (very few) vacation days over Tabaski to be able to travel to Senegal and enjoy the feast (and get a new dress, of course).
He says that no matter your religion, if you are a real Senegalese, Tabaski is your day!
I guess there is a lot to learn there.