Eid l-Kbir… or the BIG one
(WARNING: the end of the post has some bloody slaughter pictures, so if blood and mild carnage aren’t your thing, maybe skip this…)
“Mary Had a Little Lamb”, Lamb Chop, those cute sheep who jumped over the fence to put you to sleep back in the day on Sesame Street, the friendly “Baa Ram Ewe” ladies from Babe… all reasons to be apprehensive about Eid l-Kbir, Eid l-Adha, “the big feast”, or Sheep Dooms Day. Or at least, so I thought.
I’d never seen an animal slaughtered before. It’s not really what we commonly fill our holiday mornings with in America. We keep a nice, clean, saran-wrapped, safeway freezer distance from our Thanksgiving and Christmas meat. We don’t meet our Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas lamb before they bite the big one. Never see them frolic or waddle, nuzzle or chirp (do baby turkeys even chirp?). This separation from our traditional holiday fare, and the resulting gap in experiencing an animal being slaughtered, conjured in my mind how I thought I would feel:
Teary-eyed, devastated for the sheep’s family, a montage of scenes from it’s fluffy, bounding youth in a green, green field somewhere surrounded by daisies and sunshine, as I watch it meet it’s horrific end in a thrashing, blood-spurting, gory display of painful death, holding back pleas of “Oh God, it doesn’t have to be this way!”
In short: I thought I’d be traumatized into vegetarianism. I mean, how could it NOT be awful to witness, and since I’d never seen it, I’d definitely be shocked and forego meat due to this eye-opening, important, “reality-check” experience, right?
Well, nope. Turns out I’m cold-hearted.
Didn’t see that coming. I mean, the movie Homeward Bound used to make me cry at the mere thought that an animal was hurt, or God-forbid DEAD! I’m one of those crazy dog people who give (and get) separate Christmas and birthday cards from my dogs. The dogs also have stockings… and get presents. All signs pointed to horror and guilt come slaughter day, but nope. It just seemed… natural. We are humans, they are sheep. We eat them, so in order for that to happen, they must die. It probably helped that when a family here slaughters a sheep, they use everything usable and edible from it. Sheepskin rug? Check. Meals involving organs that you didn’t really think were edible? Triple check (helloooo lungs, spleen and trachea!). Plus, attention and effort are put into each animal to be slaughtered. They are pre-selected, fattened up in a humane way (just put on a high-carb diet with no exercise… literally, rather than that crazy hormone “plumping” stuff), and their death is the central part of an ancient and respected tradition. It’s a far cry from the evils of mass-meat production in the States. A whole different ball game, and to my surprise, I was fine with it.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t FUN to watch the sheep die… but it was interesting. Maybe this is the anthropologist in me, but I just wasn’t traumatized. In fact, I was more put off by trying to eat the intestines and stomach lining stewed in melted fat for lunch that came much later on (which, perhaps, is the Diva in me?). The liver was great, though, and I had a morbid fascination with watching my dainty, soft-spoken, pretty little host sister burn the hair off the severed head in the fireplace before hacking off the horns and ripping the jaw apart with her bare hands. SO AWESOME. After finishing this particularly gruesome bit of butcher work, she proceeded to re-adjust her silky pink headscarf and ask me if I wanted more coconut cake. What a woman.
And so, rather than a linear explanation of Eid l-Kbir and the events therein, you all get a description of my feelings on the holiday. Sorry, but I guess it’s not that much of a stretch to say the big event is the slaughter, while most other aspects (socializing, seeing family and praying) aren’t that foreign to us. I was definitely reminded of family holidays at home, with all the gathering and together time today. In fact, rather than being shocked into vegetarianism, my expected emotion, I was surprised by a little bit of homesickness. Not really in a bad way, however. Most of all, I’m just happy it’s the holiday season again, and I’ve got BIG plans for Christmas cookies in the very near future. MABRUK LEID!
my host sisters, getting ready in the morning
just call me "kaw-tr", waiting outside the Mosque
Just finished praying, let's go slaughter some animals!
goodbye lambchop.
the big moment
blood and gore
spectators
getting artistic with streams of blood, all the slaughtering close-ups got repetitive
half-finished product
lovely day for some lamb
showing that sheep head who's boss
the men-folk making "boolfaf"... pieces of liver wrapped in sheep fat, skewered and then grilled
