The Slaughter

Warning: the following post contains one picture that shows blood and another picture that shows the cooked head of a sheep.

“Come to my house the first day of the Eid,” my friend, “Miriam,” said to me a couple of weeks before the country’s biggest holiday. I was grateful for her invitation, but thought she was maybe just being polite after I had expressed my wish to someday be part of a family’s traditional Eid celebration – getting up early, slaughtering a sheep, and spending the day with relatives. I knew that the day was very special and generally reserved for family… so I wasn’t surprised when she sent me a text the day before saying her father said I should come the second day instead of the first. “He says after 7, OK?” I made plans to do some work in the afternoon and visit her family the evening of the second day.

My phone rang at 7:10 am on Eid Day 2. Miriam. All of the sudden I realized that when she said after 7, she meant 7 in the morning! I answered, sounding as awake as I could. “Hi dear,” she greeted me with a chipper voice. “We are on our way to get you, we’ll be there in ten minutes.” I jumped up and pulled clothes out of my wardrobe as we talked. “Ok! Just call when you’re here.” I brushed my teeth, pulled back my hair and got dressed. Eight minutes later (there’s NO traffic the mornings of the Eid) she called. “We’re here!”

I got in the vehicle with her and her father. Her father explained apologetically that the first day of the Eid wasn’t typical for them, because they had other family responsibilities. Today, though, we were going to his sister’s house where we would spend the day. And slaughter a sheep.

This was my third Eid in the Middle East. I’d heard over and over about the traditions associated with this holiday – the significance of remembering Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, the purchasing of a perfect sheep, and the importance of distributing 1/3 of the meat to the poor, 1/3 to friends and relatives, and keeping 1/3 for eating themselves. For the past two years I had wished I could be part of this day. Now it was a reality. It wasn’t the first day, but it was mighty close.

We arrived at Miriam’s aunt’s house and I was greeted by her cousins and their parents. One of her cousins, “Mohaned,” had purchased the sheep and would be doing the slaughtering. “The person who slaughters shouldn’t shave or cut his nails for 10 days before,” he told me. The family explained other customs and traditions associated with the sheep and its death. He motioned for Miriam and I to see the sheep, which he had purchase the day before and kept in a small room off the house.

Miriam’s aunt served us tea and ma’moul, traditional date-filled butter cookies. Then we went outside. The late summer weather was still at a very comfortable 75 degrees, and the morning breeze and shade of the patio made for the perfect setting to observe this bit of culture I had waited so long for.

“The poor thing,” Miriam said as she looked at the sheep. “You know,” she informed me, “they have to make sure that the sheep never sees the knife, so it doesn’t know what’s coming. It shouldn’t be scared.”

The men came out, and one led the sheep towards the entrance of the patio, at the top of the stairs going down to the street. One of the ladies dumped a bucket of water on the stairs to prepare for the blood. Two men gently laid the sheep down onto its side, and Mohaned came from behind with the knife. “In the name of God,” Mohaned said, and he quickly slit the throat of the unsuspecting animal.

I was glad the men were blocking the view of the fatal wound. But there was no hiding the blood, and as soon as it flowed I felt in my own heart the significance of Blood as we see in the Scriptures. I was reminded of how this was the same type of process that our spiritual ancestors executed, year after year. I’ve never witnessed such a flow of blood in front of my eyes, and it reminded me that it’s through the Blood of the Lamb of God that my sins are cleansed.

As soon as the blood was emptied of from the body and the animal was fully dead, the men began the strenuous process of skinning and butchering. My attention was turned away from the knives as Miriam’s aunt addressed me. “Are you a Mus|im?” Her question was direct. “I’m a follower of the Messiah,” I answered her, and she smiled and nodded. As most people here do, she and her brother expressed that in this country, there’s no distinguishment between Christians and Mus|ims. 

This is the opportunity I’ve been hoping for. I thought. “This is the first time I’ve seen a sacrifice,” I told them. “You know, the Taurat [Old Testament] is full of examples of the prophets making sacrifices. But as Christians, we don’t slaughter sheep anymore. But that’s a long story,” I said, wanting to see if they were interested. 

“We’d love to hear,” Miriam’s father said. Here was the open door. I mentioned Abraham and his sacrifice, since it was such a direct bridge from what they were celebrating. I then explained how God, through Moses, commanded his people to slaughter a sheep without fault or blemish, and put the blood on their door to protect them from the angel of death.  I told them of how God implemented the sacrifice as a symbol of redemption – that a price must be paid for our sins. The family – even the men butchering – listened intently. 

“Many years later, when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming near, he proclaimed to the people – ‘Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29). John was prophesying that Jesus would be the last sacrifice for the people. Because He was completely perfect, He could offer Himself as a redeeming sacrifice when He died on the cross.”

I knew that this was the point of contention. The quiet listening was over, because “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing” (1 Cor 1:18). Mohaned spoke up and quoted the passage from their book that denies the crucifixion. The family discussed it among themselves. “This is one of the places where my faith and your faith are very different,” I told them. “All of my life and belief is built on the Injeel [Gospels], and it says there that Jesus died and was resurrected from the dead.” The conversation then began to shift to other things.

As the men finished their work, we moved inside. They covered the patio in water and washed and scrubbed. Kerosine took care of any blood stains. When I left the house later that afternoon, I couldn’t see a speck of blood.

Not so dissimilar to an American holiday, the family sat around and chatted, the children played, visitors stopped by, the television droned in the background, and the women worked in the kitchen. An hour after the men had gutted the sheep, we were served a traditional breakfast of the inner parts cooked into a stew, eaten with bread. Yes, I ate it. It was served alongside delicious hummus, vegetables, olives, lebneh (yogurt cheese), and magdoos (eggplant that is stuffed with walnuts and peppers, then fermented and stored in olive oil).

Later that afternoon, we had lunch – the national dish, mansef. Mansef is made with the fresh meat and rice, which is cooked in jameed (goat yogurt that has been dried and reconstituted) and served with toasted almonds and extra jameed. It’s a very tasty dish that men eat with their right hand, and women eat with a spoon. This mansef was extra special because it was served with the sheep’s head (also well-cooked) on top. Miriam’s brother was careful to pick a generous amount of meat off of the bones for us (which is difficult to do with a spoon). Then were also sure than I got to sample the tongue.

Around 5:30 (10 hours after Miriam and her father picked me up), Miriam and her brother agreed to take me home. I left the house with a bag of the freshest lamb meat I’d ever possessed. As the most popular Arab music boomed through the speakers of her brother’s sports car, I sighed out of deep gratitude. I had participated in something so special – the slaughtering, the holiday with the family, the traditional foods. And in it all, the Lord had opened a door for me to plant seeds in the hearts of Miriam’s family. “Miriam,” her uncle said before I left, “You have to invite her again anytime we are having a barbecue or when we’re doing something together,” he said. I felt honored to be  included in this family and I look forward to more special times with them.