Islam’s Bloody Celebration

Travel Stories: At the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice in Jordan, Rolf Potts unearths the quirky, intimate face of an Islamic world you won't find on the news

After ten weeks of traveling through Egypt, I’d found that Islamic hospitality more than lived up to its reputation: Most of the Muslims I’d talked to were amiable, kind-hearted people who practiced their faith with natural sincerity. On the same token, however, none of the Muslims I’d met seemed to know why they were Muslims; they just instinctively knew that their faith allowed them to live with a special sense of peace. Whenever I tried to qualify this faith in objective terms, people became defensive and impatient with me.

Reading the Koran didn’t help. Perhaps when studied in its classical Arabic form, the Koran is a heart-pounding page-turner. My English translation, however, had all the narrative appeal of a real-estate contract. Nearly every page was crammed with bewildering sentences that seemed to have been worded at random. An example: “But when they proudly persisted in that which was forbidden, we said to them, ‘Become scouted apes’; and then thy Lord declared that until the day of the resurrection, he would send against them those who should evil entreat, and chastise them.” (Sura 7:7)

After a while, my only reaction to such verses was to stare at the page while my mind wandered about aimlessly. In this way, I ultimately found that my reflections on Allah were being offset in equal portion by thoughts of breakfast, girls I should have kissed in high school, and the lyrics to “Rhymin’ and Stealin’” by the Beastie Boys. I gave up on the Koran less than a tenth of the way through.

Thus, I considered my trip to Jordan on the second day of the Eid to be my most immediate and realistic chance of knowing the intimate ways of Islam. Just as a person can’t know Christmas by interrogating shopping mall Santas, I figured my understanding of the Eid al-Adha lay outside the bloody distractions of Cairo. In Aqaba, I’d hoped, I stood a better chance of experiencing the Feast of the Sacrifice as an insider.

Aqaba, Jordan is a city that owes much of its fate to the rather arbitrary international borders drawn up in Versailles and London in the wake of World War I. Though the city had been used as a trading post since the days of the Edomites and Nabateans, its port and beaches never found much permanent distinction. This all changed in 1921, when Winston Churchill (who was the British colonial secretary at the time) oversaw the creation of a Transjordanian state that featured a mere 11 miles of coast on the Gulf of Aqaba. Nearly 80 years later, Jordan’s only seaport had inevitably blossomed into a dusty, yet functional resort town. Jet skis and glass-bottomed boats plied its waters, weekend revelers from Amman crowded its beaches, and drab concrete buildings dominated its shore.

Upon arriving in Aqaba, I hiked into the city center in search of a hotel where I could change out of my bloodstained clothes. Because most hotels in Aqaba were full of Jordanians spending their Eid holiday on the beach, my only option was to rent a foam pad and sleep on the roof of a six-floor budget complex called the Petra Hotel.

I shared the roof with four other travelers, from Denmark and Canada. When I told them about my plans to celebrate the Feast of the Sacrifice in Aqaba, I got two completely different reactions. The Danes, Anna and Kat, were horrified by the thought that I would intentionally seek out Arab companionship. Both of them had just spent a week on the Egyptian beach resorts in Sharm el-Shiekh and Dahab, where the aggressive local Casanovas had worn them both to a frazzle. The two spoke in wistful terms of getting back to the peace and predictability of their kibbutz in Israel.

Amber and Judith, on the other hand, stopped just short of calling me a wuss. The two Canadians had just returned from spending a couple weeks with Bedouins in the desert near Wadi Rum. Not only did they celebrate the Eid as part of their farewell party, but they personally helped butcher the goats. To experience the Feast of the Sacrifice any other way, they reasoned, would seem a tad artificial.

“And besides,” Amber told me as I changed into clean clothes and prepared to hit the streets, “Aqaba is a tourist town. The only people you’ll find here are college kids and paper-pushers on vacation from Amman. You’d have better luck getting invited to the Eid in Toronto.”

Amber had a point, but she was wrong: I was invited to celebrate the Eid before I reached the ground floor of the Petra Hotel.

My would-be host was Mohammed, a bespectacled 16 year-old who stopped me in the second floor stairwell.

“Where are you going?” he asked as I walked by.

“Well, I’m hoping to go out and celebrate the Eid al-Adha,” I said.

“The Eid!” he exclaimed. “Please come and celebrate with us!”

It was literally that simple: Such is the gregariousness of the Arab world.

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Columnist Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. This story was a notable selection in the "Best American Travel Writing 2002" Anthology.


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