One of my best stories from a trip to India a few years ago was the site of 3 men and a goat riding in an autorickshaw (a 3 wheeled 2 cycle taxi) on the streets of Bangalore. This week I saw something equally amusing, two boys stuffing five live sheep into a four-door sedan.

Normally I might pass by something like this as a fact of life. After all, if you need to transport sheep, and all you have is a car, than what is funny about it? However, in light of the sheep putting up a bit of resistance and the local men finding it equally amusing, I figure I can find some humor in the situation.

All of sheep activity is related to an important Islamic holiday. The annual Hajj pilgramage to Mecca is this week, which corresponds to the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha. Around Cairo nothing marks this holiday more than the tradition of sacrificing a domestic animal, usually a sheep, in recognition of Abraham's sacrifice of his son before God.

In simple terms this amounts to a massive food drive. Everyone who has the means to afford one will purchase an animal, whose meat is then distributed to the poor. The entire operation is actually global in scale and amounts to what might be the world's largest single charitable event.

Unlike Christmas, the signs of the holiday's approach are a bit more subtle. In fact, with the exception of the activity surrounding the sacrifice, there isn't much to raise consideration. About a week before the holiday I noticed many butcher shops setup decorations and lights. As the holiday grew closer, I witnessed an ever increasing number of sheep hanging from their roofs. Within a few days of the start of Eid Al-Ahda, live sheep were seen wandering around in front of the shops for people to purchase. Finally, on the morning of Eid, the sheep were slaughtered and their meat was distributed.


You would think the sheep wouldn't find this whole spectacle very amusing, but I was fascinated at how relaxed they seemed to be. At one shop near my flat, I watched a man cutting meat on a butcher block, standing under several dead sheep hanging from an awning while three live sheep ate happily from a trough. I can only imagine that only moments earlier the meat on that block was sitting next to them enjoying the same cud. Such is life I suppose.