Eid al-Adha (the other Eid, the one with the sheep)

There are two Eids. There's the first one, at the end of Ramadan, the Great Breaking of the fast, and then a couple of months later, there's another Eid, Eid al-Adha. The one with the Sheep.

The second Eid is to commemorate a story known to Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. The one where God calls Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his first and only son in an act of obedience, but right at the last moment, when he's just about to go through with it, God intervenes and provides a lamb for sacrifice instead. The God, he's such a messer!

In Muslim countries, this means we get two days off, and families buy a sheep to slaughter at home. To us Infidels, it's incredible. All through the night for the whole week before, all you can hear is the sad little sheep, bleating in your neighbours' gardens, preparing themselves for the big goodbye.

The supermarkets go crazy to get in on the act. Sheep are sold in huge tents in the car park, and families go along to pick them out like Christmas Trees. And they are expensive, the big ones are anywhere upwards of 600DTN, which is about £250. From the supermarket, you can also buy the food and a bit of hay for the poor little fella to sleep on.

Traditionally, the slaughtered meat is divided into three parts. The family keep one third, another third is given to friends and relatives (this is where I really seemed to profit!) and the last third is given to the poor or needy.

Personally, I enjoy the brutality of it. This gigantic slaughter of animals seems so barbaric and old-fashioned in this day and age, and adds to the wonder and spectacle of the festival. On the day of the slaughter, my sister and her fiance were here (more on those adventures later) and we drove through some of the biggest cities in Tunisia, and they looked like complete ghost towns, besides the odd group of men barbecuing a sheep's head at the roadside.

 

It was a great Eid... and an unexpected but glorious by-product of the festival? The wool shops are now very well stocked.

Beyond Walls 2013

Tunis, like all great cities with a swelling population of disenchanted, creative youths, loves a bit of graffiti. The wall just outside my house, proudly displays a number of tags and a dis-proportioned head smoking, hardly artistic, but certainly making some kind of statement - something like, "I never learn to draw".

But the Beyond Walls 2013 murals are different. They are a series of beautiful, carefully designed and executioned paintings of hope, unity, freedom, friendship and comradery  that are in downtown Tunis, very close to my office. They were painted over the summer and I had been wanting to photograph them for ages.

Designed by a group of Tunisian students, working together with international artists, the murals hope to begin a context for cross-cultural sharing and dialogue.

Personally, they just make me smile.

This is my favourite. Tolerance is written in English from left to right in red and in Arabic in black from right to left > تسامح

"Tolerance" is a word discussed a great deal when considering cross-cultural relationships. Many people don't like it as it implies a deep down resentment or lack of acceptance for the acts, beliefs or nature of others and the idea of having to "tolerate" them is seen as an insufficient level of acceptance. In an idea world, I agree. But real cultural clashes are difficult to rationalise, especially if the causes lay deep-seated in religion or histories of fractions, or pride. In this case, even tolerance can seem like an achievement. We can hope in the future for respect and acceptance and love, but let's keep tolerance as a good place to start.

Plus, I think it looks cool.

"Hi, are you busy? Will you come to a circumcision BBQ with me?"

This was the text message that I received from my friend Lucy, on a warm Saturday Afternoon in October. It was a difficult offer to resist. The party was to celebrate the circumcision of the two-year old son of her landlord and would be catered by the chef from our favourite brunch place.

But circumcision holds a history of trauma in my brain, having notoriously passed out in a Religious Studies class at school at the tender age of eleven, when watching a circumcision video in a lesson on Judaism, and having been subsequently reminded of this for the rest of my secondary school life

"Will there be any circumcision done at the BBQ?"

"God, I hope not"

I was sold.

In Islamic culture, unlike Judaism, there is no set time limit on this magical rite of passage. Apparently there are no direct laws regarding it at all in the Qur'an, although the practice is widely and routinely carried out. Kindness and parental guilt seems to dictate that it is done in Tunisia while the child is still a toddler, but in some Eastern Islamic cultures, it is done as an adolescent rite o passage, similar to some Bantu tribes in Africa.

Being British, I come from a culture where circumcision is quite rare, and the idea of having a party to celebrate it seemed a bit bizarre. But, of course, I was happy to celebrate along with little Hedi, who had already has to op' and was prancing around is a little sparkly suit, happy to have all the attention. And, he had a lovely cake, which was, almost certainly, taller than him.