Who let the sheep out?

Sheep were accumulating all around me and I was starting to get a little confused.

About a week ago a herd of sheep appeared in the middle of my neighborhood in Amman. There’s an empty plot of land in front of the small strip of shops here that looks like a square of wilderness/a sorry excuse for a park. Suddenly there were sheep and a shepherd. Interesting.

I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Sheep in our neighborhood? Weirder things have happened. But then, a few days later, I started noticing sheep in other neighborhoods too. All rounded up in makeshift pens, at the center of these urban areas.

It then dawned on me that there was no way the shepherding industry was relocating to Amman. While driving past another pen of sheep a couple days before Eid Al Adha, I realized that this Eid was the Eid of sacrifice and that in the Muslim world these sacrifices are up close and personal.

How close? Well, let’s just say everyone goes to sleep one night and wakes up the next thinking that they’re butchers.

(If you’re uncomfortable reading about gore, or barbaric things like animal sacrifices, please skip the following blog entry).

I had fallen asleep after 3 a.m. but, of course, at 6 a.m. on the morning of Eid Al Adha, the kids like to get to the mosque and start yelling the good old Eid takbeer as loud as they can (this is a special prayer/chant deal that goes down on Eid). I made some good attempts at sleeping through them, since prayer wasn’t until 7 a.m, eventually waking up at 6:45 (the mosque is a block away from my apartment).

Which reminds me, what, in the name of sleep, is Eid prayer doing at 7 a.m. in a Muslim country where the next three days are national holidays? Please, some one explain this. Not too many people are going to work and this prayer can be later on, can’t it? Of course not. Let’s all wake up at 6 a.m. on our day off. Great.

After the prayer I decided I’d head over to witness some of our neighborhood sacrifices first-hand.

For those of you in disagreement with the idea of an animal sacrifice, but who still decided to read this anyway (why you’d do that is beyond me) let me say that, even if you put aside the reason for the celebration of the sacrifice, this holiday feeds millions of poor people throughout the world as the meat generated from the sacrifices is given as charity and, being as Muslims are typically meat-eaters, feeding the poor is one of the great things about this celebration (as it is with the other main Muslim holiday, Eid al-Fitr).

On top of that, as Muslims are meat eaters, it’s often encouraged to witness the sacrifice, if for no other reason than to know what goes on in the process of getting the food that you eat. After all, if you’re going to decide to eat meat, you better damn well know that it comes from a living thing and that, involved in the process of eating meat is act of killing an animal to provide your food. As the line between animal and food has been thoroughly obscured in the United States, especially with the advent of supermarkets and packaged, boneless chicken breast meat, this is an important realization for all meat-eaters to have.

With that being said, I had never seen an animal get slaughtered, so I figured that I owed it to my food to witness the action. I walked from our mosque to the center of town and already, I could smell the blood in the air.

There were crowds of people out on the street, grouped in front of the butcher’s shop, around the sheep’s pen (which was across the street from the butcher’s shop) and in a small area on the other side of the pen, on the open dirt area, next to what appeared to be an old swing set.

Women and many children were present, including very young girls and boys. Not one of them even blinked an eye, perhaps a testament to how disconnected American are from this process and, conversely, how connected Arabs are. Many of the young children even assisted in the rituals themselves.

(Again, if you’re sensitive to gore, this is the time to stop reading).

As I approached the area, I noticed some recently killed sheep carcasses out on the street. I was confused as to why they were killing these animals on the street until I saw them arranged in proximity to a storm drain.

Dead animals were in the process of being skinned as they lay on the floor. Other carcasses were hung by hooks on poles (I think some were hanging from the aforementioned swing set, but I’m not sure if that’s what that green structure was) and were being cut apart and divided.

A neighborhood boy, who usually helps out in the town’s supermarket, was busy keeping track of who was buying which sheep and of how much they owed, jotting down notes in a notebook as he ushered out sheep after sheep, quite forcefully, often stopping to add more information to his book, keeping the sheep at hand under control by holding its neck between his legs.

Prior to coming down the hill to the center of town, some friends at the mosque had told me not to go. They had said that most of the local Arabs didn’t adhere to the strict Muslim code of respect and care involved in slaughtering animals. Typically, animals are supposed to be kept in a separate area from where they’re being slaughtered. They’re not supposed to be able to see what’s happening to the other animals. Also, they’re supposed to be killed in a dignified manner, with a quick slit of the throat to allow for blood to drain and for a quick, painless death. Animals are not supposed to be harmed or mistreated in the process.

What I saw in Kharabsheh was, well, I don’t want to say the opposite, but it wasn’t the way that it should have been.

Animals were being skinned and butchered all around the sheep’s pen. Each animal was being forcefully dragged to its doom, sometimes being held still by its owner with a leg pressing on its neck, pressing it against the ground.

After 20 minutes I watched carcasses being skinned and divided, with young boys, maybe as young as 7 years old, helping their relatives by spreading a carcass’s legs, or helping to cut off its skin. Young girls were killing time nearby, unfazed.

Eventually a crowd larger crowd developed near the storm drain. There were some new sheep-owners who wanted to have their animals killed next. Four men waited for the butcher, holding their sheep as carcasses were being skinned and butchered next to them.

The butcher was being nagged by the owners. They wanted him to get them started to that they could be on with their days. He argued back that he was busy, and continued to hang up other carcasses and help with skinning.

Suddenly, he turned away from a carcass that he had just hung and, in what appeared to be an angry and aggressive burst, quickly headed toward one owner with a determined, angry look on his face. I almost thought he was getting ready to yell or fight, but then he reached for the owner’s sheep, grabbing it roughly, then in forcefully picking it up and slamming it hard onto its back. He pulled his knife out and quickly slit its throat.

He did the same with the other animals, almost angrily slamming them onto the road on their backs before slaughtering them. The dead animals convulsed briefly, kicking their legs, to no one’s astonishment but mine.

It was bloody and disturbing, but I assumed that that was how it was done and I headed back up the hill.

Later I stopped at the Zawiyya (our local Sufi outpost) where another slaughtering was taking place. This Zawiyya is headed by an American sheikh and most of his followers are foreigners from Europe and the United States. Everyone had told me before that if I wanted to witness a slaughtering, that I should go there because they handled everything appropriately.

I walked around to the back of the building, and had to peer down into the floor below to see how they handled the sacrifice.

After one animal was done being cleaned in the area, another was brought out from behind a wall. I couldn’t see where the other sheep where, but I’m assuming that there was a good group of them behind that wall. My friend Ishaq led the sheep into the area. It didn’t resist at all, unlike the ones being killed at the center of town. Calmly, our designated slaughterer, Moussa, joined Ishaq and held the sheep together. They pushed the sheep onto its side, not calmly, per se, but definitely not harshly, aggressively or harmfully. Then Moussa reached over with the knife and slaughtered the animal. It all happened quickly and seemingly without struggle. The animal was killed almost as soon as it was brought out. Quite a contrast.

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