The A9ed (eed)

Yep, that’s the number 9 in there. It has something to do with the pronunciation; Arabic is so easy…ummm, I wish. The word actually means feast and that’s what we’re having around here.

So Ramadan is over and the a9ed is upon us. Basically, the it’s like Christmas only 4 days long (throw in the day before and the day after where no one does anything b/c it’s almost the a9ed and it can be long!) Everything shuts down and tons of people travel to see their families. Actually, interesting, the roads outside of the capitol are so dangerous and crowded that they have police out and make people travel in convoys. Apparently at the edge of the city they make people line up into groups of 100 cars and then they are escorted at 40km/h (about 20 mph). My landlord’s family is taking a trip that would normally take them 3 hours but it will take 6. But, they didn’t leave early to avoid traffic like I would think…nope, they just sat around the house, slowly packing their stuff until they felt like leaving. My dad would have had us in the car at 2am if it meant avoiding a long drive like that!

At the end of Ramadan there is also a night of power. I’m not exactly sure what it entails but I know that the boys were out in full force beating real drums in rhythm (as opposed to the usual sporadic beating of pots and pans) all night and there were firecrackers going off constantly, plus several extra calls to prayer. It’s basically just one big celebration.

This sounds gross but tonight the smell of blood is in the air. People are out slaughtering goats and sheep for their celebrations. They just do it in the street; the men go out and buy a goat and then bring it home and just take it out in the street and cut it up for the women to cook. It’s a pretty gross smell and then there's the fact that blood is all over the dirt streets, making mud, and then I can actually hear it happening from my apartment which is pretty gross too. Good thing I was already sick today so I didn’t go out, otherwise I probably would have witnessed it and I don’t know that my stomach could have taken it at the moment!

There’s more to the a9ed than this, these are just my observations of the start. Tomorrow is the first day and I’m sure it will be interesting.