Uncategorized – Page 2 – Eating Research

It bleats, it pants, it kicks, it smells, it is: ‘l hawli’. As I pass by the market with my clearly French face, this is helpfully (and without my asking) translated for me as: ‘le mouton’. L hawli, le mouton, the sheep, has arrived in central Rabat.

The holy festival of Eid l’Kbir (big Eid), officially known as ‘Eid al-Adha’ is this Monday. The celebration remembers Ibrahim’s sacrifice and is a major festival in Islam. The exact date is determined every year according to the lunar calendar, and in Morocco the feast is accompanied by two days of public holiday. Public transport is packed as everyone goes to join their families. The festival seems to be a joyous time for everyone and I’ve never seen some of my teachers looking happier. It’s just the horned protagonists who don’t get to join in with the smiles and celebrations.

For me, the festivities started when the taxi ride to school suddenly got more interesting. Normally you hail down a little blue cab, see whether it’s going in your direction, and whether your journey is compatible with the journeys of anyone else already in it. Then, like taxis anywhere, there will be a speedy journey with strange music or chat about the weather.

This week though, as the empty land which hosted an international music festival in the Spring was turned into a different kind of living hubbub. As we pass by the market the conversations change: ‘have you bought your hawli yet?’, ‘no, not yet!’, or, ‘l hawli, no! In the market they’re too expensive! We have them in the countryside, my uncle buys him cheaper’.

At the language school where I’ve been trying to remember my (Moroccan) Arabic, hawli is clearly the word of the week. I have never seen so many sheep impressions. My first curiosity and question (to a taxi driver) was, ‘do people buy their hawli dead or alive’. The question worked better after I’d actually learnt the words for dead and alive, but by the end of the week I didn’t really need a verbal answer. These sheep were going home in-tact. My teacher confirmed my conclusion: the hawli goes home, it lives in the garden or on the balcony, the children feed it grass, and then a few days later, ta da! The adults have done their work, and no need for any more grass.

I don’t want to romanticise the hawli market. The sheep going home on hand-pushed carts are the lucky ones. A lot of them get a cord around their legs and are then instead headed for a car boot. Be that car a swanky brand new white four by four, or the boot of a small taxi.

Nor do I want to make it sound unreasonable. Perhaps if in Europe we went to the effort of going and choosing a live bird for Christmas, we would value more the life and sacrifice of that animal. Perhaps. In any case, the reality of the provenance of meat is being made painfully clear in the streets of the capital this week.

Unfortunately, I’m going to let you down at the end of this post with no actual food (again!). As an outsider, on this occasion, not wishing to impose on any families and their quality time together, I am not sharing in the festivities and the sacrifices of Eid. Instead I will do what’s expected of me as a French, white, Christian tourist and have a couple of days off too, on the beach. The sea is one thing that doesn’t close for Eid.

Pop-up hawli market

Hawli goes home, I catch a taxi

Men sit and watch over the animals they have bought to market

I wasn’t the only window-shopper

A woman takes a reluctant hawli home

spryte

My trip to Morocco begins with, ahem, Spryte. I’ve obviously changed a letter but it will get us used to the interchangeable y/i in Arabic. Of course in fact it is actually known the same here as everywhere else. So we start with sameness rather than difference.

Having arrived at Gatwick airport hot and thirsty I am confronted with the choice of paying £2 for either water, Spryte or a whole host of other fizzy drinks. Beyond the x-ray border where bottles are headed for the bin, if I want hydration, it’s this or drinking from the tap, and (this time) I don’t have time for that. A big lady in a fantastically purple dress and matching headscarf says £2 is too much and I agree. However, I also know how fast I dry out on the plane so this time I hold onto my health and just compromise on price. Although I’m not happy, water should be free! Didn’t some friendly international lawyers establish somewhere that we should always have access to water?

On the plane we have the same choice of water, sugary juice or fizziness. Furthermore, the lack of alcohol marks the transition into a slightly different culture. The woman in the seat next to me foresaw this and has a small bottle of gin in her bag in one of those containers designed for shampoo. She’s lovely, headed with her son straight to Agadir for a holiday in the sun after a year working in a hospice without a break.

I think the idea of going to another country usually comes from the desire to encounter difference. Different weather perhaps, a different culture, different people, something, some difference that has motivated us to go through passport control and risk losing our luggage for a few days. Yet, perhaps the airport administration and the-businesses-that-be know better than we do. When we arrive, a little wary and weary, what we want is something we recognize, something we understand, not yet ready to navigate the difference we came to see. Thirsty, and tired, I see what I need…. Spryte. Of course I don’t really ‘need’ it, but it seemed like I did. For the same ransom of 20 Dirhams, or just under £2. My token of homogenized sugary water this time bought me the time and the permission to sit in the airport train station café and gain the role of ‘consumer’ rather than ‘lone female looking lost’. Of course I would have preferred a home-made tea and cake, but in lack of it, I have to recognize that the sugar water was my friend.

Over-priced sugar-water is actually quite an apt introduction to Morocco. With the high temperatures that can make you light-headed with low blood pressure, sugar is welcome. Usually it comes as tea, or maybe as orange juice with added sweetness, but either way, the size of the cubes are testimony to the size of the popularity of sugar, with or without the tea.

So what does Spryte say about being at both ends of the journey to Morocco? Well, it says everything you want to hear, it says, no worries, I’m recyclable (with the little symbol for those of us who care); it says, what’s the problem? I’m just lemonade, with the symbol of a lemon on the front but no lemon in the ingredients, and then it talks to us in three languages. It has two prices, the one I paid and the one written on the bottle. It says, you can see what you want to see, but you’ll never understand it all.