Dhaka

Last week we had a five-day break for Eid al-Adha, the second Eid, which commemorates the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Ishmael (not Isaac as in Christianity). I went to Dhaka for the first time since my arrival at the airport five months ago. Before arriving we had to survive an absolutely terrifying seven-hour night bus trip on the Dhaka-Chittagong “Highway of Death.” I can safely say I didn’t sleep a wink on this swerving nightmare of a ride. It seemed like we were on an enormous rocking boat going an hundred miles an hour, making our way on a tiny fog ridden road, crushing everything in our way. But we made it and from now on I’ll be taking the train.

Dhaka was empty. A mass exodus to villages had hollowed out the City. All across Bangladesh people returned to the rural areas where they’d been born and where cows and goats awaited a very bloody fate. The ritual that belongs to Eid al-Adha is that of Qurbani, or the slaughtering of an animal as a sacrifice to God. In the days leading up to the festival you see cows decorated with necklaces of flowers or bright cloth encircling their horns—a fleeting moment of beauty and respect just before death. They lumber along, seemingly calm and unaware of what lies ahead.

It will sound strange to anyone who hasn’t been living in Chittagong since this summer when I say that Dhaka reminded me of home. Obviously it’s not like home at all. But there were many many more foreigners, women riding bicycles, cafes, red lights (though we were informed by a Bengali that they’re “optional”), parks, fewer stares, couples holding hands in gardens, and the general feel of a capital city—more cosmopolitan, progressive, and ahead of the rest of the country. While new visitors to Dhaka might see pushy rickshaw drivers, men praying in the streets, I seemed to only be able to concentrate on the familiar.

We visited the American Club, which was even more bizarre. It was like being dropped into an alternate reality. Blonde boys and girls played on a swing set next to a tennis court. Women in bathing suits read magazines by a giant in ground swimming pool. There was bacon and Starbucks and fifteen different types of beer in this strange, cocooned world. I realized it would be entirely possible to be in Bangladesh and never really know it if you existed within the walls of the American Club. But I also couldn’t be as dismissive and snide about its comforts and self-imposed segregation from the “natives” as I might have been if I was hearing about it from the U.S. When you miss home for a long enough and are gawked at any time you step outside your door, the respite that comes with pizza, sameness, and reminders of your old life is both wonderful and necessary.

There was still plenty of Bangladesh in our trip to Dhaka to keep us from completely forgetting where we were. The morning all the animals were slaughtered we were inside but leaving the house later we could not escape the aftermath. It was a vegetarian’s nightmare (and I was traveling with two of them). Bodies, and when I say bodies I mean entire bodies, of goats and cows lay sprawled out in front of houses. We were staying in the wealthier part of Dhaka called Gulshan so it seemed every house on our street could afford a cow. I saw stomachs, rib cages, bowels, legs, piles of hooves and hides. Men pounded on bones and slabs of meat with enormous knives. Blood streaked down the long white Punjabis men wore. Women squatted in saris, cleaning out the intestines. The smell of the blood and meat was thick and distinct but did not seem to deter men and women from sipping tea right next to those who were chopping at flesh. We were told it would take 4-5 hours with everyone working to completely take apart the cow and have suitable meat for cooking.

On the banks across the houses sat groups of thin, ragged men, women, and children holding bags in their hands, waiting. Eid al-Adha is not just about sacrificing an animal to God. What happens after the sacrifice matters too. A third of the meat is kept by the owner of the cow. A third is given to friends and family. And a third is handed out to poor waiting strangers who have never and will never own a cow. The open-handed generosity brought out images both oddly beautiful (men and women practically skipped with overflowing bags of meat on their heads and in their hands) and uncomfortable (lines of people arguing with one another about who would get what). But mostly the holiday left me with a sense of unsparing balance. The animals that died at the hands of those who would eat them gave life and precious meals to the people I often see digging for scraps in the mounds of trash outside of my well-furnished apartment. I think few of us imagine that there’s dignity in a hamburger but watch men live off garbage and food becomes a currency with multiple values.

And speaking of feasts, whether you axed your own turkey or not, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Shockingly, Chittagong’s fanciest hotel had a Thanksgiving buffet last night and we ate our fill. It wasn’t as good as my grandmother's, but they even had cornbread.