Eid-ul-Azha, a bloodshed

Warning. Please don’t read further if you are a sensitive person, explicit pictures will follow.

Eid-ul-Azha is an important religious Muslim holiday, celebrated on Friday this year. This is the official definition.

In practice the streets in Dhaka flooded with blood, bowels, carcasses. All in burning sunshine with a consequent smell.

The tradition is based on the story where God commanded Ibrahim to sacrifice his adult son. Ibrahim obeyed and took his son to Mount Moriah. Just as he was to sacrifice his son, an angel stopped him and gave him a ram to sacrifice instead of his son. 

In Bangladesh Muslims commemorate the event very literally: they slaughter sacrificial animals in the middle of residential areas. In most other countries the celebration is more symbolic.

Eid-ul-Azha preparations were visible a couple of days before the celebration. The city was suddenly full of cattle, parked in front of houses, in walkways, in garages. We had at least four bulls in the basement of our apartment house.

The pre-Eid-days were kind of exciting. My husband compared the bulls to christmas trees. And the allegory is not so bad. Like christmas tree vendors, the cattle sellers do everything to make their merchandise look attractive. The bulls are washed, brushed and decorated. I many cases they are also artificially fattened. The richer the buyer, the bigger the bull.

Authorities claim that the animals are from Bangladesh but probably a large number of the bulls are smuggled from India. Kind of ironic that holy Hindu cattle become sacrificial animals in a Muslim country.

 

The animals are transported to the buyer’s house either by truck or by men who walk them.

The repulsive part of the holiday started this morning. (I have chosen the more modest pictures).

 

The air was full of desperate animal cries. The creatures were lined up in the streets, slaughtered one by one while the others were looking and waiting for their turn. 

An imam in white, later blood stained clothes, moved from animal to animal to with a sharp machete in his hand. More than 1,2 million bulls, cows, goats and camels were slaughtered in Dhaka during one day.

After the deadly cut, a crowd of men attacked the animals with their knives and saws, took off the skin, bones, internal organs and meat. Everything was done in the dirty, hot street by men standing in flip-flops or barefeet in the blood. Female househelps washed the bowels while blood thirsty crows and straydogs were circling the scene. 

 

The meat from the animals should be divided into three parts. The buyer keeps one third of the meat, another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors. The remaining third is given to needy. Thus, people moved from door to door to collect their share of the meat.

 

 My over-social husband had "a long and nice talk" with a neighbor whose bull was slaughtered in our basement. I really, really hope that the encounter will not lead to meat pieces sent to us nor an invitation to a dinner.