Painting the Town Red

Today was the beginning of Eid al-Adha, the “Feast of the Sacrifice,” when Muslims celebrate Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Ishmael by slaughtering millions of goats, sheep and cows in the streets, and sharing the meat with their families and the poor. We woke up at 5:00 AM and walked to the square for the opening prayers. The females among us wore headscarves and skirts, and we found seats on a fountain overlooking the square, which was soon filled with thousands of worshippers. The sight would have been stirring, except for a fatal error on my part: talking with Egyptian children.

I should know better by now. But little eight-year-old Mohammad was so cute, and when he asked, “What’s your name?” I couldn’t resist answering. Before long, all twenty of Mohammad’s friends had showed up, some his age, some much, much older and less cute. And long after we had covered all the basic subjects in Arabic – where are you from? George Bush good? Barack Obama good? How long have you been in Egypt? Do you like Egypt? Have you seen the pyramids? Do you like Eminem? Are you a Muslim? How old are you? Are you married? – at least three times, and taken pictures with all of them, they insisted on continuing to jabber at me in Arabic, long after it was clear that my vocabulary was exhausted and the only response I could offer was, “Asif, mish faahim.” (I’m sorry, I don’t understand!) Thomas, CJ and Austin tried to take some of the brunt by jumping into the “conversation,” but their numbers quadrupled in response to the supply. And then the older boys wanted to know (and they knew the English words), “Are you having sex with the girls? Do you have drugs?” And then the Egyptian girls sitting behind me started pulling on my hair (which, admittedly, was pretty crazy – I hadn’t combed it.) And when finally the prayer started, and thousands of people around us starting bowing in unison, they still wouldn’t shut up. They kept on talking, even though I was shushing them and saying, “Salat! Salat!” The prayer!

I will never understand what makes me so fascinating to Egyptian kids. Ah, youth.

After the prayer was over, the party really got started. The huge masses of people started flowing out of the square, many of them dancing, throwing confetti and setting off firecrackers. We joined the throng and followed the crowd back to Agouza, where the sacrifice was beginning.

On nearly every street we walked down, men were actively chopping animals to pieces, letting the blood flow freely on the sidewalks and into the streets. The butchershops were in high-gear, taking down entire herds of sheep and goats. I got to witness the killing of four sheep, two goats, and a cow. The first killing (a sheep) shocked me a lot more than I thought it would. The men grabbed it by the neck, shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” slit the throat, and then basically stepped back while the sheep reeled and stumbled and finally flopped headfirst onto the sidewalk, blood spraying out of its jugular all the while. Poor, good-hearted, amazingly empathetic Chelsea was standing next to me during the first sheep’s death. When they brought out the second sheep, and she made no motion to leave, I broke Egyptian social taboo and put my arm around her shoulder. After the second dead sheep was finished twitching, I asked her, “You OK?” “Yeah!” she said in a really high-pitched voice. “I’m just gonna go now.” Good thing she didn’t stay for the cow.

Today was also the first day I took flack for being an American. We were standing across the street from a butcher working on a batch of sheep, and we were in full tourist mode, cameras out, probably gawking too much. One of the men turned to us and shouted, “We kill animals. You kill human beings, like in Afghanistan. You care about animal rights, we care about human rights. This is the difference between our backward civilization and your forward-looking civilization.”

The statement was so nonsensical, so wrong on so many levels, and so offensive at the same time, that I didn’t know how to respond. In retrospect, the myriad of devastating retorts seem so obvious:

“What are you talking about? We kill animals in America all the time!”

“My friend, does not the Qur’an command, ‘Fight those who fight you?’ That’s why my country is in Afghanistan.”

“Right, because Hosni Mubarak never kills or tortures people.”

“No, the difference between my civilization and yours is that in mine, a girl can go to a religious festival without being grabbed by some ‘Muslim’” (as, in fact, happened to one of my friends that very morning in the square.)

“Weren’t human beings killed in the Ramadan War, or do Jews not count?”

In real life, my response was much less impressive: “No, we don’t!” and, when the verbal barrage continued, “We just want peace!” and, when we decided to walk away, “Happy holidays.” Scott, one of my great friends here, who I’ve had countless debates about American foreign policy with, was standing beside me, and didn’t really know how to respond either. He correctly judged that the man probably thought that we thought he was a barbarian for butchering animals. So he said, “We’re not judging you, we just want to watch.” But the man continued spewing his nonsense, so we walked away, and I was forced to ask myself, once again, “Is it possible that someone could really believe that? Are people really that ignorant?” Brian, who was there, later reminded me of what the Arab League guy (see below) said to us: “The problem isn’t that Egyptians don’t understand U.S. policy. The problem for you is that they understand it too well, and they don’t like it.” Merda. Bull.

If that weren’t enough, while we were still in the square, a piece of newspaper on the road (probably from a truckbed covered in newspaper, the better for doomed-cow-carrying) caught my eye. The headline on one of the stories read, “Warnings Against a Jewish Takeover of Local Companies.” I took a picture.

Two nights before, Jon had told me about his Muslim host brother, who was convinced that all Jews wanted to do was drink, smoke, have sex, and kill. Multiple MESPers have been asked by Egyptians (host family members, students at Al-Azhar University, etc.) why Americans think bin Laden was behind 9/11, when it was “obviously” the Jews. One friend here told me about seeing a contest on TV, where viewers are shown a man grabbing some money out of a basket, and then encouraged to “guess the Jew” behind the crime from three possible Jewish perps, and text in the answer to win prizes.

Question of the day: If a person is brought up in a culture steeped in anti-Semitism, never coming into contact with Jews, but always been told that they are thieves and murderers by nature, should we condemn that person as a bigot if he believes the lies? Are people responsible for their own prejudices? Can a person hold false beliefs about a group of people, and still be a decent person? (I almost wrote “good person,” but as we all know, there is no one good.)

Suffice to say, I’m not really feeling Egyptian culture today. But I have some great pictures of a million people praying, streets covered in blood and dead animal parts, and a video of a cow flopping around with blood spraying out of its neck. Anyone interested?

Three days! I love you all.