My plane landed after the mass slaughter. I was glad to be spared the cutting of throats, which is often conducted along the side of the road, but I saw instead the stacks of hides pasted together, some running with blood and others white and glossy underneath like a frog's belly. The leather is hocked on street corners, but the abundant and fresh supply must make each skin close to worthless. What increases the value is the curing and the dyeing of the leather, which transforms a pile of stinking flesh into a chic throw rug sold at top guinea.
The smell of blood hangs like a fog over parts of the city. It's a smell that could be forgotten or excused as being of a different source if not for the black pools in the streets and the hand-shaped smears on some men's clothing. It's a day of feast and that feast has to come from somewhere. The sickly blood smell mingles with the cured leather scents of ammonia and vinegar and wafts into my fifth floor apartment.
This was my first experience in Cairo after spending two weeks in the U.S. Given the transition, I observed Eid Al-Adha through the eyes of those who have never seen it, and I can imagine their reactions to the public slaughter of thousands of cows, sheep, and goats. For many non-Muslim Americans, the tradition would seem foreign and possibly repulsive, a prime example of just how different 'we' are from 'them.' Unfortunately for us, there is no moral superiority in not witnessing the death of your food and there is no civility in paying someone else to kill your next meal. Any brutality that I see during Eid Al-Adha takes place every day across Europe and America, but it is contained, for our comfort and convenience, within factory farms isolated from our cities. A great deal of our perceived Western refinement must come from pushing all that displeases us into a corner that we pay to not look at.
It is good to be back in Cairo. It is a strange feeling to have a tiny fragment of this city that I can call home, to leave and return to whenever I want. Of course, when I do return it feels different, but it also feels like I never left. That's the miracle and privilege of being able to travel almost anywhere in the world within 24 hours. What is 7,000 miles away might as well be on the other side of town. Part of me always wished that teleportation was real, that I could dart across the world in an instant, but now I see that it is real. I know because I just did it.*
*If none of this makes any sense it's because I'm extremely jet-lagged.
The smell of blood hangs like a fog over parts of the city. It's a smell that could be forgotten or excused as being of a different source if not for the black pools in the streets and the hand-shaped smears on some men's clothing. It's a day of feast and that feast has to come from somewhere. The sickly blood smell mingles with the cured leather scents of ammonia and vinegar and wafts into my fifth floor apartment.
This was my first experience in Cairo after spending two weeks in the U.S. Given the transition, I observed Eid Al-Adha through the eyes of those who have never seen it, and I can imagine their reactions to the public slaughter of thousands of cows, sheep, and goats. For many non-Muslim Americans, the tradition would seem foreign and possibly repulsive, a prime example of just how different 'we' are from 'them.' Unfortunately for us, there is no moral superiority in not witnessing the death of your food and there is no civility in paying someone else to kill your next meal. Any brutality that I see during Eid Al-Adha takes place every day across Europe and America, but it is contained, for our comfort and convenience, within factory farms isolated from our cities. A great deal of our perceived Western refinement must come from pushing all that displeases us into a corner that we pay to not look at.
It is good to be back in Cairo. It is a strange feeling to have a tiny fragment of this city that I can call home, to leave and return to whenever I want. Of course, when I do return it feels different, but it also feels like I never left. That's the miracle and privilege of being able to travel almost anywhere in the world within 24 hours. What is 7,000 miles away might as well be on the other side of town. Part of me always wished that teleportation was real, that I could dart across the world in an instant, but now I see that it is real. I know because I just did it.*
*If none of this makes any sense it's because I'm extremely jet-lagged.
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