sounds of silence

After the BIG cities of Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakesh we moved on to Imlil, a wonderful little village in the High Atlas mountains. On the bus there we met a deligthful young man, Ahmed, whose family had a guest house. Pure fluke the moslim feast of Aid Kabir, the slaugther of the sheep, was on for five days. It is based on the Koran story of Abraham, who wanted to slaugther his son because he had no sheep. His son was named Abdullah, for people who want to know. The story in the Bible is slightly different; but we didn,t point that out to anybody. We stayed in the mountain lodge and literally could hear the silence at night. We became guest of the family and trotted along to grandparents and the like. Of course we paid for it all, but it was definitely a highlight of the Moroccon visit. The mountains are stunningly beautiful albeit extremely cold. The next day two man got dressed up as the ghost of the killed sheep and scared everybody by yelling and smacking people with a rubber hose. The actual cutting of the throats was not something I wanted towitness, ask Peter for details and photographs.