The sacrificial sheep in three French-North African film : displacements and reappropriations

In this article I will examine three films featuring Maghrebi migrant families between the 1960s and the present day, Le Gone du Chaâba (1997) by Christophe Ruggia, Inch’Allah Dimanche (2001) by Yamina Benguigui and Le Grand Voyage (2004) by Ismaël Ferroukhi. Each film portrays tensions between generations, between sexes, between societies and between beliefs and values. The tradition of the sacrifice of a sheep in Islam features in all three films and I use this theme to highlight how different members of the families sacrifice themselves or are sacrificed in the process of accommodating to a new way of life. I also deconstruct other subtextual references to Islamic culture and belief as representations of dilemmas and forms of reconciliation and belonging. In this paper, I will explore the symbols and representations of the sacrificial sheep in three French-North African films. North-African families are represented, the characters are migrant parents and their children and the context is France with references to the country of origin: Algeria for Le Gone du Chaâba and Inch’Allah Dimanche, Morocco for Le Grand Voyage. Le Grand Voyage is also a ‘road movie’, with other countries passed through on the car journey from the south of France to Saudi Arabia. In all three films, the father character is a North-African migrant worker. The element of class is present in the three films but although these films would be examples of the ‘cinema ouvrier’ – and Cadé (2004) does incorporate Le Gone du Chaâba (1997) in the filmography of French cinema representing the working class in 20 and early 21 century – these three films deal more with identity, transmission and belonging and could be described as ‘Migration French-North African films’. The three film directors and the writer of the adapted book Le Gone du Chaâba have a personal story of migration from North Africa to France. These three films also depict Islamic rituals and references and are to be considered as examples of representations of Islam in French cinema (Higbee 2013). In my analysis of these three films, I will concentrate on the Islamic references and representations of the ‘sacrificial sheep’ (agneau du sacrifice). The sacrifice of the sheep occurs as a motif in the film Le Gone du Chaâba (1997) adapted from Azouz Begag’s novel with the same title (1986). It is an important element in Inch’Allah Dimanche by Yamina Benguigui (2001) and a recurring motif in Le Grand Voyage by Ismaël Ferroukhi (2004). In Le Gone du Chaâba – novel and film adaptation and Inch’Allah dimanche, the sheep is part of the ritual of the celebration, the fête du mouton, translating literally as ‘the feast of the sheep’. Eid Al Adha, literally ‘the feast of the sacrifice’ is the formal Arabic name of the Islamic annual feast commemorating Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God: in the Islamic calendar the celebration of Eid al Adha corresponds to the time of the Hajj. In the third film Le Grand Voyage, the sheep is associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca in which the commemoration of the story of Abraham – or Ibrahim (and often the sacrifice of the sheep) is part of the pilgrimage ritual. I will try here to deconstruct the narrative function of the motif of the sacrificial sheep in my corpus before exploring the emerging specific signifiés of the rite of sacrifice in these representations. The story of Abraham; the Eid al Adha ritual and its meanings The story of Abraham is commemorated in the Quran; the narrative is similar to the story of Abraham and Isaac as told in the Bible, although in the Quranic text the son is not named (Quran XXXVII 99 – 111. For a comparison with the Old Testament account, cf. also Dioceserabat.org, 2014). In the Islamic tradition however, the son Abraham is bidden in a dream to sacrifice is his first son Ismail (Ishmael to use the usual English Bible spelling). God then intervenes and sends the archangel Gabriel so that a ram is sacrificed and not the son. For Muslims the ritual of sacrifice commemorates the sacrifice of Abraham – the sacrifice of a ram – but also the repetition of the sacrifice of Abraham by the prophet Mohamed. The ritual with its references to both Mohamed and Abraham is performed during the Eid celebration. It is not one of the pillars of Islam, but it is performed as part of the final stages in the Hajj, the fifth pillar (Cf. Brisebarre 1998, 2003, p 10). The Eid is called Eid al Adha, literally, the celebration of the sacrifice. In the Maghreb it is also called Eid al Kebir, the ‘great celebration’ which stresses its special importance, by contrast with Eid al Fitr, the Eid that celebrates the end of the fasting month of Ramadan which is called Eid al Seghir, the small Eid. The Islamic tradition traces the sacrifice back to both the patriarch Abraham as the founder of the monotheistic tradition and to the prophet Mohamed who reinstated the monotheistic tradition for the Arab people and performed the ritual of the sacrifice of the sheep himself. The Abrahamic lineage is an important element for establishing a connection between Islam, Judaism and Christianity: in the Islamic tradition, Muslim, Christians and Jews are also united in the expression ‘People of the Book’. In Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven), another migration film representing a Turkish father and his son in Germany, this element of connection between Islam and the West was explicitly highlighted. This powerful film by Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, a cross-cultural/cross generation tale of loss, mourning and forgiveness, won the award for best screenplay at the 60 Cannes Film Festival in 2007. The German character played by Hanna Schygulla is at the window in Istanbul when she hears the call to prayer and sees men on their way to the mosque; the main Turkish male character played by Baki Davrak explains that it is ‘Bayram’, the feast of sacrifice, and tells the story of Abraham. The German character replies ‘we have the same story’. The sacrifice of the sheep in the Islamic way of life, and more specifically in the Maghreb is not only religious, it also reaffirms family and social bonds within the community (Cf. Kanafani-Zahar, 1997, pp. 83-100, describing the different stages surrounding the ritual in Lebanon, similar to those in Maghrebi societies). Food is shared and a part of the meat is given to the poor. Finding the sheep, looking after it and preparing it for the festival involves all the generations, the neighbourhood and other social networks. The sheep itself is perceived as a blessing and everything around it also brings blessings. The preparation and sharing of the sacrificed sheep involves a wider community than the one involved in an ordinary shared meal, as the whole of the sheep carries the blessing and must be processed: sausage making, curing the meat, tanning the skin, washing the wool, etc., require many skills but allow the broader community to participate. The blood however is taboo but protective: one Maghrebi tradition is to dip the hand in the blood and to mark a wall or the house door with it to show that the sacrifice has been performed, often with the addition of the traditional protection of the hand, the khomsa. The sacrifice is strongly connected with distribution and the involvement of the broader community at different levels. In migration, the ritual loses the component of visibility in the community space, as – in accordance with French regulations – the sacrifice must take place in slaughterhouses, in a designated space that is more compatible with French health and safety regulations and which would not transgress ordinary French routine or offend animal rights organizations. In the context of migration, away from the shared values of the community, and in a space that does not allow the celebration of the sacrifice of the sheep to be displayed in the same way (something now true for many living in urban areas in Muslim countries); the Eid ritual in migration is performed differently from the Eid ritual in the Maghreb (Brisbarre, 1998); similarly the narratives of the Eid in migration cinema will be invested with new meanings and new symbolisms as they translate the experiences of the migrant as well as reach out to a culturally diverse audience in France, predominantly nonMuslim. The French-North-African audience would not necessarily identify with the religious elements but would be familiar with the cultural references to migration and to