Kurban Bajram

     Kurban Bajram or Eid al-adha can be translated as “Feast of the Sacrifice” is a major Muslim holiday.  It honors Abraham who promised to sacrifice his son Ishmael to God, before God intervened and gave him a lamb to sacrifice instead.  In honor of this sacrifice, many families here will sacrifice an animal.  In my village there are more cows sacrificed, yet some sheep were sacrificed. It fell on Saturday, October 4th this year. 

For Dobroshtë and my Albanian Muslim family leading up to that Saturday there was much anticipation and preparation. So much cleaning took place! My whole family and I pitched in to help with various chores in the few days leading up to the holiday, but most of it was done by my incredible and hard-working host sister, Amire.  She cleaned the house top to bottom--everything from windows to walls to carpets.  I figured out why the carpets here are just laid across the floors and not “installed” in a typical sense like we would think; the carpets are hand-washed, outside, with the hose.  Amire rolled up one of the main carpets and placed it outside, sprinkled it with laundry detergent, sprayed it with the hose, hand scrubbed it with a little broom-cleaner-thing, then washed it out with the hose, and hung it up to dry.  It was a very labor-intensive process and I respect her for doing all that hard work.  

She's fantastic.

Additionally all the floors were vacuumed--the kitchen-area carpet was maybe vacuumed 6 times, by just about every individual in the house in the day leading up to- and the day of Bajram.  We also scrubbed the kitchen chairs with a whole lotta dish soap and a sponge. The curtains were washed, the linens taken down from drying, and the Baklava was made. We were ready.

I went into it not knowing exactly what to expect except (say that ten times fast) lots of small misafiri (visits) and food. 

Breakfast of champions.

We started out at 8:00 am, after the men got back from something that happened at the mosque that started at 6:00 am, eating breakfast.  This breakfast is a large breakfast with warm, cooked food...and it’s the one of two days throughout the year that they don’t drink çaj rusi (russian tea), but rather Turkish kafe.  With barely enough time to finish our meal of soup, rice, chicken, potatoes, cabbage salad and vegetables, the misafirs started to come.  My family gave me the task of offering a bowl of candy to our guests--I wanted to help, plus everyone thought it was cute that “The American” was helping.  

Homemade--another blog post will be dedicated to just this delicious pastry.

The visits really did only last 5-15 minutes, and most were made by men, because the women stay at home preparing the drinks and serving the baklava; every house had baklava.  When we started going out and making our rounds to different homes, I was quickly eating my way to diabetes with all the sugary, syrupy baklava.  Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious, but oh dear lord the sugar.  Thank goodness I drink my tea without sugar.

A misafir--I spoke German to the man next to my host dad. I've been able to use my German a lot as a lot of people here can speak German, and sometimes assume, based on my appearance, that I am German.  He smokes, and even though there's no smoking in our home (he told me "Hier, rauchen ist verboten!"), he still lit up. I was perplexed by this behavior, but it seemed like what used to happen in the US when smoking was more widespread.

Albanian siblings! (Samed, Azra, Unë, Amire)

A cousin in traditional bridal clothes. 

Another new bride in a different, traditional Albanian style bridal gown.
New brides will wear their wedding dresses for up to a year after
getting married when they have visitors over.

This is the more traditional dress that we're used to in
the US that she would've worn for the actual ceremony. 

**Warning: "graphic" descriptions and a short video of sacrificed cows**

     The highlight of my day by far would be that I got to witness them sacrificing a cow.  We happened to arrive at their cousin’s home where there was already one small-looking cow that they had already killed and were skinning and starting to get it ready to get its meat.  A few things stood out: 

          –They cut the neck really deep to kill the animal, I assume for a faster death. Looking at the cow it was cut basically through everything and that just surprised me.

          –It is something they are definitely accustomed to here in the village and I don’t think they often kill their cows for meat, and they are more for producing milk.  However there were a few children helping, watching, or just being in the vicinity. 

          –The men seemed to be expertly skinning the animal.  It completely reminded me of when we skinned our cats in biology class--almost exactly.  I think because of my biology exposure to dead animals (even though they were way smaller) and having lived with a veterinarian roommate for 4 years, this didn’t gross me out.

          –The only part that did kinda give me the heebie-jeebies was when they started snapping off the legs at the knee joint.

     Then the “REAL” cultural experience took place as I was able to witness the entire process of a cow sacrifice.  If you don't want to watch the video (which took me a really long time to put together, so you better watch it), here’s what happened: 

1. Tie the cow’s head to a tractor, march it out onto the designated spot.
2. Tie more ropes around it and then get it to lie down on its side.
3. Keep the cow calm and on its side, hold your part of the rope fast if she kicks out or moves.
4. Talk in a lot of Albanian about things and then keep talking, making the American wonder what is going on and why this is taking so long.
5. Get the knife that was hiding and quickly cut the cow’s throat.
6. Scoop up the blood with a shovel into the nearby, 3 foot hole that was dug for to put things into.
7. Wait for the animal to die.
8. Be surprised when you think it’s over and then a final burst of energy happens, and then it’s really over.
9. It lasted about 15 minutes.

VIDEO

It is "graphic" but because I was filming from the posterior of the cow, and at a little bit of a distance, you don't actually see any of the actual slicing and dicing of the live animal.  There is a dead cow that you see being prepared, and it isn't much more than you would see in a butcher store...but the context is a little different. I really did work on it for a while, so I hope you enjoy it!

The Udder

A short essay

     It was surprisingly not that emotional for me to watch, and I think that was mainly due to the fact that I couldn’t exactly see the lifeblood draining from the cow.  It was all a very peaceful experience and I’m very grateful that the cow wasn’t crying out or struggling, which would’ve made it a lot more emotionally hard to handle.  The whole event was much more peaceful than I had anticipated, and was also a lot less formal than I thought it would be. It was also done as humanely as anything of that nature could be done, it was performed in the name of God, and it will feed many people with little waste--any extras get thrown into the “blood hole” in the ground.  

     The one thought I couldn't get out of my head the whole time was, "What are they going to do with the udder?" I couldn't get it out of my mind, and that was mostly because it was clearly full. Some milk even spilled out onto her leg and I couldn't stop thinking of it.  I couldn't stop thinking of the symbolism of the milk that brings life, and the sacrifice that I was witnessing.  Did they drink the milk? Did they discard it? How long does it take for milk to go bad in that kind of situation? What about the actual udder? 

     By the time we left and were walking home, I was just trying to process it all. I was thinking about why I wasn't upset, thinking maybe I was in shock, thinking of possible things they did with the udder, feeling exhausted from worrying about the cow, and mostly just wondering about the udder.  Once I actually thought of voicing my udder-related questions out loud, it seemed too weird to bring up, and I feared that I wouldn't like the answer.  So I still don't know what happened to that udder, and maybe some day I will.  I kinda like the fact that it's a little shrouded in mystery.