Discreet charm of buying Eid sheep in Tunisia

Tunis: Unable to make up his mind, Sawfan Mansouri decided to look again at the dozens of sheep. To the ten year old boy, they all looked alike and making up his mind about which one to select was a formidable task.

His father, Rashad, told him that he would this year choose the sheep for the family and the remarkable task filled him with pride and honour.

"If only my mother were with me now. She would help me choose quickly without my father knowing about it," he kept telling himself as he started once more to move from one sheep to the other, bewildered by their similar looks. But this square is off limits for mothers. Traditionally it has been up to men to buy the sheep for the family.

Discreetly eying his son, Rashad stood patiently next to a salesman talking about the problems facing him and other men who had driven for kilometers to Rades, in the southern suburbs of Tunis, the capital, to try to sell their sheep, two days before Eid Al Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice.

The salesman, Bashir, complained about the difficult conditions for him and other people in the trade to make profits to keep them satisfied and look ahead to brighter days.

"The fact that the Eid is so close in time to spring and summer is a real issue because the sheep did not grow and eat enough to look and become attractive to buyers," he said, citing one of the problems.

However, Rashad, a youth instructor, also had his lot of grievances that he wanted to share.

"Summer is always demanding on our finance because of the numerous celebrations that we mark or help fund when it is family members who are getting married. Then, we had Ramadan and all the expenses associated with it and with the subsequent Eid Al Fitr have left it with little to spend. We then had the reopening of the schools and here my wife, a teacher, and I had to think of new resources to be able to meet the extravagant demands of our three children and their schools," he said. "With the Eid sheep costing so much, we do face a mini crisis but we must not let our children feel the strain with us. This is their Eid, their celebrations and we must make them happy," he said as the salesman, himself a father, nodded his head approvingly.

Tunisians, like most people in the western part of the Arab world, make it a rule to slaughter sheep on Eid Al Adha. They refuse to donate money and allow charity organizations do what they see a sacred duty for them.

"I lived for some years in the Gulf and I could feel the difference between the way people there celebrated the Sacrifice Feast and the way we do over here," said Ali Zemni, a teacher who worked for four years in Bahrain. "Thank God, there is a lot of compassion in both areas, in line with the spirit of the Eid celebrations. But in the Gulf, many people tend to give money to religious societies or foundations that take care of the slaughtering and of distributing the meat. However, here, it is a true family affair where children are the stars who are encouraged by enthusiastic parents to experience the special feelings of Eid," he said.

Every town and village in Tunisia allocates a special place to allow sheep salesmen and buyers to meet and negotiate the price. Efforts by the government to fix prices are often ignored by offer and demand laws and by bargaining options.

"Some people prefer to buy the sheep at the last minute to have the lowest price possible. But this tactic does not always secure your win because when many people adopt it, then the salesman has in front of him many buyers. It also frustrates your son or daughter from spending more days feeding or playing with the sheep," said Maher Sakka, a computer analyst.

More than one million sheep are expected to be sold before Eid for prices ranging between 350 and 500 Tunisian dinars ($290-420)