He rinsed out the small intestine and put his lips to the tear. With the carcass hanging beside him, he took a deep breath and blew into the organ, I watched the fecal matter and water spin through the digestive tubes like a gumball in a gumball machine, around and around and around. It emptied onto the ground beside a swollen colon and the gall bladder which was a fluorescent dark green. I was in anatomical heaven. A bit perturbed regarding the homemade colonoscopy, I made a quick promise not to eat any intestines today or tomorrow, (that couldn’t be helped, and low and behold! I have raging diarrhea! And I can picture what my intestines are doing, thanks to my informal lesson earlier) I thought there was going to be more of a ceremony before the slaughter, but they simply stated, “Allah akbar,” and slit the throat of the sheep. First off, I imagined more blood and secondly, I know it is one of the more humane ways to die but it is difficult to imagine the nerve synapses fire from the brain and spinal cord and watch as the sheep tries to get up or kick at its slaughterers. And then I think about the meat packing industry in the States and all of those feelings disappear immediately seeing that the sheep lived a full, long and healthy life. Which is another reason why I ate the meat later on, and by meat I mean we ate everything: stomach, liver, kidneys, and shish kebobs with intestine pieces wrapped around meat. We are programmed as evolutionary beings to enjoy and crave salty, sweet and fat and those shish kebobs nailed it. They were delicious and the preparation would have made the FDA shit themselves. I won’t go into details but my head was screaming E. COLI and ripping in two between the typical American Lysol commercial friendly germs will attack all counter surfaces and the other half, which watches 2 years play outside unattended, bathed infrequently, and wash our hands with water (only!) before meals and they are fine. To contradict both points, my family was never germ-freaks and we never once bought Lysol and had numerous conversations about the super germs and their proliferation and mutation brought about by my peers and neighbors because of this commercial and industry pushed fear of the common cold. At the same time, when you ask a family how many children are there replies are usually follow this pattern: There are 4 boys, 3 girls, and 2 died, or something like this. Most families have suffered the loss of a child or two. I do not ask why these children died, not because I do not care, but because I am afraid of the frustration that I would experience if I heard, “It was God’s will,” I experienced this before regarding the death of a teenage boy in the village the first month I came here and had to take a few deep breaths before my reply.
Today is Leid Kabir, a huge Muslim holiday where a sacrificial sheep is killed just as Abraham did a long time ago. This holiday has some similiarities to American holidays: everyone gets new clothes (they are not wrapped in gaudy wasteful paper), everyone eats a lot (you killed a whole ram, that’s a lot of meat), and you visit each other saying the appropriate greetings for this holiday (“Mbruk Leid!” which means pretty much ‘Happy Holiday!’) and women usually get glammed up (for us that means the charcoal eyeliner and henna on our hands). There are no greeting cards sent out in the masses, there is no overzealous spending (as much as I can see in my village, things might be different in a town of 10,000), there are no decorations. Everyone cleans their house and themselves the day beforehand. I recently bought a hot water heater and the whole host family came over to bathe, you should have seen the little one fight to not get a bath! Reminded me of Maddie back in the day…
