Goat Meat
As happens frequently now my mind (heart?) tends to gravitate
towards the next writing mission for the Karachi - Houston diaries.
But the muse intervened. “Write about ritual
customary celebrations in Karachi and Houston.”
The muse obviously won.
Ritual celebrations that are supposedly suffused with
religion are always interesting to observe. This year’s barri (big) Eid is a case in point. A few days prior to the start
of this celebration, some family members, males for the most part,
enthusiastically promoted touring the animal bazaar.
“We’ve got to pick the choicest goat, sheep,
buffalo, camel, or a combination”, said my cousin-brother. That seemed to be a
valid aspiration – for him. What I learned from him: factors that weighed into
the selection process, other than price, included type and number of animals
the neighbors were buying, voice of the ill-fated animal, number of equally
ill-fated siblings present in the bazaar, city, or more likely, village of
origin (akin to human ethnicity perhaps), color of skin, size of testicles, age, figure, education, pedigree of parents, so on and so
forth.
However, there was one characteristic that intrigued
me the most and the one that made me feel deprived for being unable to select
and purchase sacrificial animals in real time over the past fifteen years in
Houston. And that was the number of front teeth visible on slightly raising the
upper lip of the goat - apparently the two toothed goat was better tasting than
the three toothed one. I was told that this feature was most important in the
selection process. In all these years I had obviously not learned this crucial
discriminating potential that vouched for the quality of the meat. I made a
mental note to myself so that next time I went to the market place I would not
make the mistake of compromising on goat meat for my family, irrespective of
Eid.
The children had already had their fill after day one
of Eid in Karachi. There had been some entertainment value in hearing and
observing sacrificial animals in the playground that the children might have
otherwise considered playing in. Even though some (animals) had been
resplendently decked up as brides and paraded around in the playground prior to
appearing on people’s plates, the novelty of observing Eid in Karachi had
phased out as rapidly as it had phased itself in.
In spite of the short-term excitement among the
kids, I think Eid in Karachi is more memorable than Eid in Houston. In the
latter city paying for the meat at a butcher’s store is lack luster and sterile
as compared to selecting, developing an attachment to, and then sacrificing the
animal in Karachi, the goriness of the process notwithstanding.
Week twelve of relocation from Houston to Karachi
was meant to be one of relaxation and rehabilitation. That it happened to
coincide with Eid was perhaps not all that surprising since it was going to
provide something to ramble about later on. The lack of any R & R in the hectic schedule replete
with visits of and to family members, the same ones at multiple occasions
during those three days, and meat gourmandizing that accompanies that Eid, was
also not that surprising.
It was only after observing the ritual in Karachi,
albeit after a long time, that I realized the most popular sacrificial animal
still remained the Bakara (goat in
Urdu) and the process of sacrificing it was still considered Baraka (blessing in Arabic). An
interchanging of two letters is all that it takes – truly uncanny or perhaps totally
predictable.
[from the Karachi-Houston Diaries]
Acknowledgment: This article was first published by the Express Tribune Newspaper.
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