Eid-al-Adha

EID MUBARAK!

This weekend is Eid-al-Adha. The holiday is based around the story of Ibrahim and his son (either Ishmael or Ishak), or Abraham and Isaac as many Christians know them (an interesting point is that in Islam it's apparently not specified that it's Ishak, unlike in Christianity where it is definitely Isaac).

For those of my friends who may be a little rusty on their sunday school stories, very briefly- Abraham was told by god to go into the wilderness and sacrifice his son. He has his son carry the wood for the burnt offering, and he carried the knife. The son asked, 'where's the sheep' and Abraham told him, 'god will provide it'. Then they got to this clearing and Abraham somehow manages to tie up his son and put him on the altar. Just as he was about to lower the knife to sacrifice his son, an angel came and told him that he has proved that he is god fearing, and pointed out that there's a ram nearby that he can sacrifice instead.

The story in Islam is a little different, but the basic points are all the same. So, to commemorate this story, Muslims have the holiday Eid-al-Adha, which basically means festival of sacrifice. We had heard a lot about the festival, but weren't totally sure what to expect. I knew that a lot of animals were sacrificed, and that there would be a lot of blood, but nothing quite prepared me for what I saw yesterday.

I should start out by saying that in the last week or so in Chittagong I saw many many decorated cows. I saw cows with flowers around their necks, cows with funny hats, and cows that were actually entirely covered in hot pink or silver glitter. I also saw some goats and sheep, but they were less decorated.

Yesterday morning Dan and I woke up to an early call to prayer when it was still dark. I lay in bed with my eyes closed and I almost felt like I was in India. I could hear cows on the streets below, and dogs barking. There was no traffic (which is quite unusual for port-city Chittagong), and there was bollywood dance music blaring from somewhere in the distance. Dan and I got out of bed when the sun was coming up and were greeted by a new prayer over the loud speakers from the mosques near our apartment: 'Allah akbar allah akbar allah akbar Eid Mubarak Eid Mubarak Eid Mubarak!' I had read the night before that this prayer preceded the sacrifice, so Dan and I hurriedly got dressed (me in my most conservative salwar-kameez with my head covered), and ran out the door. We walked over to Panchlaish (the other AUW apartment) where we met Denise. The only people we saw out on the streets were men walking towards the mosques. People were bundled up because the weather has cooled down a bit, and mist was still lingering along the slanted Chittagonian streets.

Denise told us that she knew of a residential area near Panchlaish. We headed off and were quickly in streets surrounded by many cows, goats, and the occasional sheep. Families were out photographing their huge cows and bathing them. They took care to heat up water, add soap, and wash the bulls head to toe. The animals were also given water to drink, it seemed. Soon the streets were all covered with water, as if it had rained, when really it's been dry for weeks.

A cow about to be bathed

A woman and her baby, with their family's cow

A decorated cow, watching me

A large cow and a Bengali man

Sheep and cows. A typical street scene.

A cow and bricks

A huge cow

A goat with a flower lei

A cow staring me down

We spent several hours, I think, wandering around the winding streets of this one residential area. We met up with a group of young women who eagerly chatted with us in our limited Bangla. One girl, named Pakhi, decided that it was her duty to be our personal tour-guide, and spent much of the next hour or so hunting out the largest cows in the neighborhood and taking us to them. We were quickly surrounded by a pack of children, and were somehow just as much of a spectacle as the cows themselves.

A cow and the posse of people following us around

What is interesting is that the value of the cow isn't measured in its usefulness as a worker, or give or milk or life. It is simply the largest cows. As a result there is a tendency to fatten up the cows with uria or steroids, until the meat is actually not healthy to eat. There also seemed to be some politics involved, as the neighbors all gathered on the streets to check out each other's cows, and show off their own. As we wandered to one huge cow to photograph it, someone else would clearly get a little jealous and pull us over to his cow. As a result we saw a lot of cows, and spent a lot of time demonstratively admiring each and every one.

A stubborn cow refusing to go where they wanted him. I think they won out in the end.

Sorry, Cow.

Dan with some big cows!

Pakhi, who made herself our personal tour guide.

Eventually we wandered by a mosque, which was filled to the brim with men and a sermon was going on. A few minutes later we heard the call to prayer start, and suddenly the street was filled with men sprinting and being taken by rickshaws, in an attempt to get to the mosque in time. The sacrifice cannot be done if it is not preceded by a prayer, and it was clear that everyone was trying to get to the mosque before the prayer was over. We wandered by the mosque again and noticed that this time it was so full that people were actually praying in the streets!

Men Running to the mosque:

We continued to wander around, but pretty quickly after this we found ourselves in the middle of the sacrifice itself. The streets that had so recently been filled with living cows, goats, and sheep, now served as the altars for the sacrifices of these animals.

I don't want to get too explicit and graphic for those of you who might not want to see or hear about it. So you might not want to read on, or look at the following pictures if you're a little weak-stomached. I had originally intended to do a "read more" button on Blogger, but I can't figure out how to do it. sorry.

Since coming home yesterday, I have done a little research on halal methods of killing animals, and it, for the most part, confirms what I saw yesterday. The entire method is done in such a way that there is less blood in the body (because blood is not halal), so that the animal does not suffer, and so that the meat is kept clean and undamaged. Despite how disturbing this whole event was to see in a lot of ways, the idea is that it is the most humane way to kill animals. Of course, like anything, this is a controversy. Some of the information I found online said that some people say that since it takes up to two minutes for the animal to die it should be considered inhumane. I read this and balked because yesterday we saw cows bleeding to death for upwards of twenty minutes.

Cows on the street bleeding to death

Cow on the street bleeding to death, and a man preparing to skin the cow.

Dan photographing dead goats, with a cow being skinned in the background

The way the sacrifice works is that a group of men work together to tie the cow's legs together and push it over onto its side. I don't want to get too sentimental, but there is something automatically disturbing about watching or hearing a cow fall over. It's such an unnatural sound that it alone is notable from yesterday's events.

Once the cow is on its back, it is killed. It seemed like there would be one man per area of street doing the actually slitting of the throat. He wore a white kurta and white taqiyah on his head. It's my theory that since the animal has to be killed in a very specific way in order to be halal, someone who is an expert in this does it for all of the families to insure that no one accidentally kills the animal in a haraam (forbidden) way. Therefore, this man had a lot of work to do.

The man who did the actual killing, going from one animal to the next. If you enlarge this you can see there is a lot of blood on his right arm. Dan watched from the sidelines.

One family would work to secure their cow on its back, with its throat pulled taught and its head thrust back against the street pavement. This man would then rush over and in a few swift motions almost entirely sever the animal's head from its body. The head is still attached by the spine, because it is important that the spine is not cut through. The idea behind this method is twofold. One, it is considered more humane because the animal will no longer have blood going to its brain and will thus black out, and it will not have to feel the pain of having its spine severed. Two, it's important that the animal's body is rid of the extra blood, as blood is haraam in Islam.

Cow bleeding to death in the sunlight

A cow dying and streaking the hilly street with its blood.

This, you may imagine, was a little hard to watch. Once a cow was dead I didn't feel squeamish about the families skinning it, or cutting it up (although I didn't see much of the cutting up). It was only the part where the animal goes from alive to dead that was upsetting to me. My breaking point came when a cow in front of us was cut and its jugular started spurting blood four feet in the air- in our direction. We quickly backed away, but found ourselves backing into a cow that was on the ground, bleeding out, kicking, and trying to breathe. I suddenly felt very trapped, and decided I wanted to go home. Denise and I ventured back through the maze of blood stained streets and dying cows, but Dan stayed until the cows were completely disassembled, and the streets were washed mostly clean. While there he received some dozen invitations from friendly families who wanted to share their feast with him (unfortunately those feasts happen at 2 in the morning!)

Denise retreating down the blood stained road

Sweet families keeping us company

An adorable boy up early and bundled up for the day's events.

At one point a man who spoke English asked us if we were enjoying the sight. We politely said, 'yes, it's very interesting,' but then asked if it was okay to be there and watch. He replied by saying that it was definitely okay, and we were free to have some of the meat later on. We were constantly being smiled at by passers by, and were surrounded by women (who would not have to do any of the work until later when they would have to cut up the meat and cook the feast).

All of the meat is cut up and divided into thirds. One third stays with the family. One third is given to relatives. One third is given to those in need. The skin is also used for leather. Later in the day Dan and I saw the only wasted part of the animal, the guts, being pulled out of the trash piles by stray dogs. Literally everything was used in some way by something.

I do feel like such an American city girl right now. I am used to buying meat pre-packaged, wrapped up in cellophane, and weighed- the inedible parts disposed of long before I arrived. I'm not saying that's better. A part of me feels like if you're going to eat meat, you should be able to face the fact that you're taking an animal's life, and that that action is probably going to be disturbing in some way no matter what. I think my sister may have said once that she would never eat an animal that she couldn't kill herself, and I admire her for that.

I wrote once before about the transparency that you find in everything in Bangladesh. Before, I was writing in the context of buying spices at a little shop, and the men tasted each spice until they found cinnamon for me. Again today, I'm thinking about transparency. I know how these cows were killed, and what they went through. I saw the face of the man who killed them. I know that man spent time before hand, praying to god and appreciating the life he was about to take. This is so vastly different from the US where when you buy ground beef you're probably eating meat from 15 different cows from 3 different countries and 6 different states. The cows were probably killed in an assembly line style, broken legged and shot through with electricity until they were stunned to death. This is clearly not any better than what I saw yesterday in Bangladesh. I had to somehow admire the little boys playing, the way children do, as their fathers and brothers killed animals in the street in front of them. Death is a part of life that people do not, or cannot, shy away from here.

I don't want to get into a rant about how in the US I am more willing to eat meat because I am distanced from the animal, and how that is like people being able to kill humans with guns when they wouldn't be able to do it with their own hands (although there's something to be said there, I think). I do just want to say that it was an incredible experience- emotionally provocative as well as thought provoking. I think once is enough and I wouldn't go out of my way to see this same event again, but I can definitely say I learned a lot, and came out of the day with a lot to think about. I feel like I have gone 24 years without completely knowing what it means to be an omnivore.