Goats, Terrorists, and the People Who Love Them

So yesterday was Eid. There were no terror attacks (except for the Pakistan team being terrorized by Andrew Symonds, you could hear their knees knocking together when they went out to bat), despite Bush’s squawkings about missile alerts and Tony Blair sending all of Britain’s tanks to make sure the EasyJet drunken yob-and-lad flights from Ibiza came in safely (would it really have been such a loss?).

The television kept broadcasting footage of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Muslims circling the Kaaba, and army troops moving in to protect Heathrow until it all jumbled together in my mind and I was about to call up the FBI and turn myself in just because I felt so damn guilty. On top of this, the newscasters were telling us that to protect yourself from a bomb attack, all you needed was a few sheets of plastic and some duct tape. Yeah, duct tape would have really helped last week when that bomb exploded outside the PSO office (maybe if you’re McGyver, as Jay Leno said on the Tonight Show last night). The only thing duct tape is good for, trust me, is taping back the pieces of your dismembered body after the smoke clears away.

If you want to be terrorized, though, I urge you to visit Karachi during Eid-ul-Azha. The day before Eid, you will see goats riding in rickshaws and cars like human passengers, gentle cows waiting to be bought like blushing brides ready to be deflowered on their wedding night, and camels jogging along the streets led by owners who are as proud as if they’ve just won the Kentucky Derby. The award for the worst photograph ever taken goes to the one I saw in the Dawn three days ago, which juxtaposed a large picture of long-lashed camels smiling for the camera with a small corner picture of evil-looking men buying cleavers and butcher’s knives at the local market.

The morning of Eid you will hear the animals’ screams as they are all slaughtered to celebrate the end of Hajj and commemorate the near sacrifice of Ishmail by his father Ibrahim, peace be upon them (and woe to the sheep that got chopped up instead). Go out to visit your relatives as is customary on Eid day and you will see the streets swimming in rivers of blood, innocent goats hanging from every tree outside every house with the skin being pulled off it while children laugh and point at the sight of the denuded goats. Bags of pale, bulging offal litter the streets like naked German tourists sunbathing on the beach at Majorca. Butchers squat at the traffic lights, their clothes covered in blood, carrying baskets of sharp knives and cleavers and comparing notes about how much the prize cow kicked around while its throat was being slashed and how fast they were able to finish the job.

What nation wouldn’t be traumatized with this as their tradition? Our children become more immune to blood and gore than any video game could ever make them. I remember being a child and watching a cow being slaughtered on Eid day. I had bought two new Enid Blyton books but to my horror, when the cow was killed, its blood splattered all over my books. They still bear the brown marks of that poor cow’s blood. The cow made a screaming, hoarse sound that reminded me of the hee-hawing of donkeys; to this day I can’t hear a donkey braying in the street without flinching.

That day I also learned the meaning of the phrase "ran around like a chicken with its head cut off" because there were also two chickens to be sacrificed. They were decapitated and then they ran around like, well, chickens with their heads cut off. One of the roosters really made a dash for it, almost made it out the front gate, and then collapsed just as it reached freedom. Not that freedom would have been much use to it without its head.

As a child I used to feel very upset for the animals because I thought they knew what they were going to go through. But the other day, looking at some goats at the back of a Suzuki pickup truck, I looked into their eyes, trying to see if they had any idea of their impending doom. They really didn’t. Their eyes stared blankly at me and they chewed on their fodder with calm. I wondered if someone had slipped some Valium in their feed, and then I realized that animals aren’t that intelligent after all (on the morning of Eid, though, they do alert each other by screaming at the top of their lungs which terrifies all the other animals, passing birds overhead, and even some squeamish adults). What’s the difference between slaughtering a goat on Eid and slaughtering it to eat on any other day of the year? Not much, really, just a little less drama and religious zeal.

The worst part of Eid, though, is not the slaughter, because it isn’t me that’s getting my head cut off, for heaven’s sake. It’s when you’re sitting at the lunch table and they bring in plates of steaming biryani and salan and mutton kebabs and all the rest of it, and everyone falls to their meal, smacking their lips and gorging themselves like they were trying to win some sort of all-you-can-eat prize. I could never erase from my mind the thought that this plate of meat being devoured by my relatives was Fluffy the Goat two hours ago, who I’d spent the entire week feeding tender leaves of grass and reading to him from my storybooks in the insane idea that he might like a bedtime story before he got murdered.

I am not opposed to animal sacrifice, and I hold it as my God-given right as a Muslim to sacrifice animals and distribute their meat to the poor on Eid. I hope to be able to do this all my life, because it is a tradition I believe in. But the sights and sounds of Bakra Eid I witnessed when I was small is probably is the reason why to this day, as an adult, I cannot kill so much as a spider crawling along on my wall.