My friends and I crowd around one of the seven sheep on a rooftop that glows orange in the Rabat sunset. “I really wish you hadn’t named him,” I tell Andrew.
“Look at that face, it’s his name!” Andrew responds, and I have to agree, as Milton looks up at us and I let him take a lick of my Moroccan mint tea.
“Sorry about this, buddy,” I say and give him another pat.
Eid is a holiday that encompasses almost all conceivable cultural differences between America and Morocco, the clearest difference being that each family slaughters a sheep on the rooftop apartment complexes.
Coming from a place like New York City, where the most popular restaurant on my block is a vegan joint, I find it hard to imagine a tradition like this ever taking place in the U.S. Although I’d been raised on the desensitizing violence of American television, I had no experience with the reality of something much more ordinary: meat preparation. This stands in stark contrast with my host sister, Wiam, who is a stereotypical ‘girly-girl’ teen. She wears crop-tops, skinny jeans, and loves American boy bands, yet her Moroccan roots shine through as she describes to me a Claymation children’s movie about Eid, in which the sheep has a song and dance about not knowing what her future holds. Wiam laughs so hard at this that orange juice comes out of her nose.
Another difference: leading up to Eid, the Rabat streets, an urban setting full of cars and pedestrians, are also filled with sheep being led into people’s homes. It’s hard to picture what would happen if hundreds of sheep were herded down Park Ave, yet in Morocco, no one looks twice. Many are kept on the rooftops, but one of my friends says his sheep is kept inside their bathroom, and every time he walks by he hears a little, “bahhh.” The sheep’s sacrifice represents Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God. Therefore, the sheep is cared for and tended to, and when the sacrifice happens, it’s considered sacrilegious to let it see the knife. The idea is to be humane, do it as quickly and painlessly as possible, and don’t waste any of the meat. The whole family comes together to prepare and feast on it, and traditionally they eat the liver first.
When the holiday arrives, my small and gentle host dad, who is tasked with carrying out the slaughter, warns us not to go out because the streets are filled with blood. I think that’s one reason my host-sister and I both like Eid: Wiam, a dramatic teen, and I, an American who has never partaken in something like this before, both find ourselves at a vantage point that lets us see not only the religious importance, but the shock-value as well. There’s something special about a holiday that finds itself in the rare cross-hairs of being wholesome, significant, and gruesome all at once.
When my host dad is ready, I move to watch, until I feel my host mother pull my arm and cover my eyes, saying, “I don’t think you can handle this, dear.” And through the cracks of her hands, I can just make out sixteen-year-old Wiam, with her nail polish and ballet flats, excitedly sprinting over without hesitation.
I fell in love with plataformas the moment I saw a four-inch pair walking toward me on Avenida Santa Fe, the runway-like street that passed by my homestay in Buenos Aires, Argentina. These elegant shoes were attached to an equally stunning Argentine woman, and I watched in amazement as she strutted past me, oblivious to the fact that she had just transformed the life of a yanqui student who arrived woefully unprepared in South America’s fashion capital with a pair of worn Reeboks and last year’s sandals.
Upon receiving my Argentine Enlightenment, I began seeing plataformas everywhere — a five-inch pair of stacks leading a woman down the steps to the Subte, a chunky pair of multi-colored sandals stabilizing a teenager as she waited at the bus stop in San Telmo for the colectivo to arrive. My parents had talked about their fling with platform shoes in the 1970s back in the States, but the blue suede neck-breakers I saw pictured in the photo albums back home could not hold a candle to their chic Argentine cousins. I quickly realized these shoes were not strictly for daytime, and after a few nights, I learned plataformas were a staple in Argentine nightlife, too, and, in some cases, my friends from my program were denied entry to certain venues for not possessing the Holy Grail of footwear.
I bought my first pair of plataformas around the end of April, right when fall had fully grabbed a hold of the city and homesickness had finally grabbed a hold of me. My classes were in full swing, it was finally warmer in Gambier than it was in Buenos Aires, and I was sure I would blow a bolt the next time a cashier started speaking to me in English before I even had a chance to choke out a word in Spanish. I was resentful that I was donning a winter coat as May approached, and I was disappointed that my Spanish was not improving as much as I had been told it should. Santa Fe is riddled with clothing stores, and I ducked into a little shop right at the corner of Bulnes one Friday afternoon. After eyeing my musty sneakers, the shopkeeper was more than enthusiastic to help me change my fate.
I left the store with a pair of sparkly black combat boots that gave me more than three inches in stature: They gave me the confidence I never thought I would need. After five semesters at Kenyon, I knew my place, but in Buenos Aires, I had no idea who I was. Maybe it was because the shoes made me look more Argentine, or maybe it was because I finally felt like I belonged in Buenos Aires, but the plataformas helped ground me in my new surroundings, and they helped me feel confident enough to ask for what I needed in order to thrive abroad. Once I had a pair of the illustrious plataformas, Buenos Aires felt a little warmer, I felt a little happier, and I began to make my own life in Argentina.
