21Eid al-Adha comes about two months after the feast at the end of Ramadan. I woke up early to the sound of the sheep in the inner courtyard. It was bleating, and the sheep in the neighbours’ houses bleated back, as if they were exchanging festive greetings or perhaps saying goodbye to each other before the mass slaughter in the morning, when their blood would flow into the street, to be washed away with water and disappear through the grating in the gutter nearby.
It was half past six in the morning. Before people started visiting Grandmother I had already finished having a shower in order to meet her, kiss her forehead, and wish her well on the occasion of the feast. I put on the new clothes I had bought specially for the occasion from the menswear shop near the central market: a white
