We turned off an unpaved road after a series of rights and lefts through the dry, South Texas grasslands. I didn't get to see much of the homestead upon entrance; I was driving through a dust cloud kicked up by the speedy Dr.--------, our companion and leader on this excursion. What I did see was three chained dogs lunging at our passing tires, restrained by metal but itching for a chance to attack. A bluff, in my experience, but intimidating nonetheless.
Dr.-------- parked behind a shed on a flat expanse overlooking a tilled field, the stubby greenery and vacant tractor hinting at its recent cultivation. The tractor had a bulldozer attachment in the front. In the bucket of the attachment we saw a heap of fur, bits of intestine, and a decapitated goat's head. Flies swarmed over the open eyes. This was Dr.--------'s goat.
The reason for our visit to Abu -----'s farm was to slaughter a goat. My family (I mean my mother) buys one from a local farmer once or twice a year to supply our meat. The curry my mom makes (something like this) from the mutton is my favorite meal. This time, Dr.--------, a meat aficionado and resident "busy eccentric man who is expert in a variety of random things and finds obscure farmer in Poteet, Texas who will halal slaughter goats for you," came with for his own purchase. He was not interested in participating in the butchering process. I, on the other hand, was.
About a week earlier, my mom asked if I had any interest in doing the zabiha, the Islamic tradition of humane slaughter, for she had placed an order for a young goat with Abu -----. Almost immediately I said yes. Maybe because I wanted to experience an ancient, universal human experience that I had yet to truly know. Or because I wanted to prove my metal, my masculinity. Or general curiosity. Probably all three. I think of myself as open-minded and usually willing to try things that aren't a serious threat to my emotional and/or physical well-being. Hell, people for time immemorial have been doing this all over the world. I can overcome my modern, urban sensitivities, I thought. We're disgustingly disassociated from our food sources anyways. This is as good a time as any to cross that gulf.
Greeting us is Abu -----, a middle aged man donning work clothes and a kind smile. Dr.-------- led with "As-salamu alaykum," a salutation reciprocated with "Wa Ężalaykumu s-salam." We were introduced with the same friendly exchange, and he had no problem pronouncing my name. He was passing chunks of flesh through an electric buzzsaw, skillfully picking his way around the vibrating steel teeth with exposed fingers. I was nervous just watching.
He led us around the two small sheds to a fenced pen with a few dozen goats and sheep. The area was clean, no smell of feces and sweat and fear like at the cattle auctions I used to go to with my grandpa. The animals were standing around quietly. Two mothers nursed lambs only a few weeks old in a separate enclosure. Abu ----- pointed to a couple different goats as options for us. These are young, he said, about one year old. The meat will be tender. We chose an 11 month old (approx.), on the smaller side, but healthy, a good choice according to the experts.
I went in the pen with Abu -----, who grabbed the goat by the hind leg. It had beige fur with brown spots. He told me to hold the leg and bring the goat behind the pen, next to the tractor, out of sight from the other animals. It whined and squirmed for a bit, then succumbed as I pulled it towards its final spot on Earth.
Now watch, Abu ----- said. He pushed the fore leg behind the goat's head and, with his left, held the head down from the chin. The neck lay exposed, aiming skyward. He was behind the goat, I in front holding its other legs down. The neck faces quibla, he said, pointing to Mecca over the horizon. You sure you want to do this?
I could have told him no, you do it. I wanted to say so. He wouldn't have thought twice, and neither would my mom or Dr.-------- or anyone. It was frightening in the moment. I wanted to walk away. But I told him the opposite. Yes. I want to do this.
He switched places with me. Now my left hand held the head. My other held the knife that sat on a flat stone nearby, the glinting tool of Abraham the same as it always had been.
He touched the neck, its own entity now separate from everything else in my mind, the head, the legs, the cute baby lambs a few feet away, the concept of mammals and animals and life and the universe. Cut here, fast and hard. Back and forth. Say bismillah, then Allahu Akbar three times. That is all.
My heart was pounding my ribs. My ears heated up with the torrid fluid racing through my arteries. I felt the creature under my hand, but I wasn't paying attention to that. All I saw was the neck, protruding and alone, and the knife right above.
Allahu Akbar, I said as the blade dug into the flesh. I pushed down and cut; blood squirted from the jugular. Allahu Akbar. The trachea flopped in two, severed. Crimson red pumped out onto the dark soil. Allahu Akbar. The goat never cried, it never knew what happened. The head was bent at an unlivable angle before a second had passed. Abu ----- snapped its neck backwards in a swift jerk, it twiched and kicked its floundering legs a few times, and within a minute the blood stopped running, and it was dead.
I stepped back, knife in hand, looking at what I'd done. My face scrunched under the KN95 mask covering most of the area below my eyes. The smell was strong. The scene was gruesome, violent in the most primal sense.
But the emotions that came were not sadness, nor guilt, nor regret nor shame. I'm not sure what it was. It was a moment almost free of emotion, honestly, the way a shocking, climatic moment is, when you don't have time or the capacity to process and display a feeling. It just happened. I stood in emptiness. It was real, and it was my doing. It was remarkably sudden, tangible, and now a strange memory of me acting without reservation. To think that was me. Strange, right? That's all there is to it.
I watched as Abu ----- butchered the slaughtered goat in a bare shed with tin walls. He started from the heels and cut the coat from underlying muscle the way you pull a sweater off after a long cold day. He cut the head and hooves off. He removed the intestines and the pancreas, kidneys, liver. He hung the goat by the ankles from a coat-hanger hook to do this. When he did, undigested corn pellets fell out the stomach, and a bit of deep coagulated blood from the heart dripped out too. He hosed this down a drain on the concrete floor. Otherwise there was relatively no blood or gore at all. The pink flesh looked like raw meat from the grocery store.
I spoke with the man while he cleaned the goat (sometimes delicately, sometimes with force). He's actually a lawyer in his home country of Sudan. After law school he worked in Abu Dhabi in criminal investigation for fourteen years. That was before moving west for his children's future. His oldest, whose name is the "-----" in "Abu -----," recently finished medical school. Mr. Hassan (
