Eid el Kabir (aka Eid al-Adha) is coming up in the Muslim calendar. It’s sort of like the Christmas/Hannukah/Thanksgiving of Morocco in that it’s a big holiday where families get together and eat a lot of food. Of course, there is no tree/menorah/turkey, and this holiday has no relation to Christ/Maccabes/Plymouth rock. Instead, people are celebrating the many sacrifices Ibrahim (or Abraham) made as one of Allah’s early prophets by sacrificing something of their own: a domestic animal. Here in Morocco, it’s a ram.

The holiday is about a month away, but much like in America, the heavy advertising has BEGUN. We found this sheet of newspaper on our street just a few days ago:

The deals look pretty sweet. This ram will cook itself:

This one will freeze the leftovers.

And this one cleans up when it’s all done… somehow.

We were considering making a cartoon about it, but then we turned over the page:

We know for sure the sheep on the right is saying “Baaaa…baaaaa”. The one of the left (who would be responding to “baaaa…baaaa” because Arabic reads right to left) is harder to translate. We think it might say: “Finance something-or-other vendor stink.”

Maybe it’s funnier in Arabic than English?

We’re going to have to investigate further.