The Berber world

{{comments_count}} In a small locked temple in Taliza, two wooden idols sleep throughout the year. Only one festival brings them out: Ashura. In 1920, Émile Laoust gives a striking description of the ritual — a sacrifice, a strangely unclothed man amid the jeers of the crowd, a great bonfire, and two divinities whose identity he himself is still trying to understand. A sacrifice, a bonfire, a night apart It all begins on the eve of Ashura with the sacrifice of …