Eid, North Carolina Style!

Baqra Eid is a religious holiday where Muslims give goat meat to the less fortunate. In many ways, it's like a Thanksgiving canned food drive except with raw goat meat.

Many Pakistani people in their everlasting quest to assimilate into mainstream American culture would just send money to the homeland to get a goat slaughtered there. After all, no one wants to see messiness of a goat sacrifice in the grand ole' US of A, where such an event would be grounds to get a pie in the face from PETA (a la Anna Wintour).

Such assimilation was not prevalent in our community in rural North Carolina. Maybe it was because we were so isolated from sophisticated, big city folk that we evolved differently than our fellow countrymen (sort of like the flora and fauna of the Galapagos Islands that Darwin found). In our neck of the woods, we did our annual goat slaughtering in my friend Raabia's backyard.

Raabia's dad was a surgeon so he knew how to sever the goat's carotid artery with an expert finesse. Usually, everyone would get together at the Bhatti house after Eid prayer and the dads would unload the baby goats out of the truck. The men would tie the goat to the old swing set and then slaughter it (in an emulation of how Abraham sacrificed his son Ishmael). All the bystanders would watch with eager anticipation for the fresh goat stew that we made afterwards.

Raabia, then in her tomboy phase, would often invite her American friends to watch the "cool" stuff her family did in the backyard and sometimes brought out the old video camera to document the proceedings. Nowadays, Raabia is married and an assistant buyer at Macy's; I'm pretty sure that the annual goat halaling has lost its appeal to her.

Anyways, since Pakistanis are super loud when they are together as they talk in loud Punjabi about the evil state of Israel, the neighbors would inevitably wander out of their homes to observe the commotion. I am fairly sure they would get scared at the sight they saw - hordes of brown people, in bright colors, excitedly gathering around a goat. They probably had a sudden realization that their seemingly well-adjusted neighbors were members of a pagan, occult religion that worshiped the blood of dead animals. Ahhh, to be a foreigner in America.

--By Mariam who is giving Bushra and Mahmood (aka Hamad the East Coast pimp who got all the Sunday school girls following him) a shout out. Holllllllllllaaaaaaaaaa.