Young shepherds bond with new best friends

Children feed, adorn, and care for their sacrificial animals ahead of Eidul Azha.

KARACHI: Meet Chand, the goat. Chand is brown and white and — as his 14-year-old owner, Aaquib, describes — is ‘smart’. He feeds his beloved Chand and points to the moon he made on its back with henna.

Like Aaquib, other children too name, adorn and show off the cows, bulls, goats and camels bought for the Eidul Azha sacrifice.

The excitement grows as Eid day comes closer and it is difficult to drive through streets with animals — and children — in every nook and corner. “I can take it out on my own without my father’s help,” says a proud Hasan with a twinkle in his eye. Showing off his goat, with a soldier-like countenance, he describes his routine of taking it out of his garage three times a day after the meals. Within a span of two days, he and his goats are “good friends”.

But Eid day itself is grim for the kids. Huzaifa says he cannot see his goat being sacrificed.

So he goes to see other animals being slaughtered and returns when his father and elder brothers are finished slaughtering their goat. “I feel bad because they have a short life.”

Behind his sadness is his mother’s story that on the eve of Eidul Azha, all sacrificial animals see knives and daggers in their dreams and yelp in fear. However, the concept of qurbani (sacrifice) is clear in his mind. “It is God’s order so we have to do it and God will give us a reward after death.”

Eight-year-old Umme Kulsum is dragging her precious goat across the street outside her house. She says her parents had bought the goat early because of her. “Abbu would have bought it much later, near the Eid day, but Kulsum insisted that she wanted a goat as soon as possible so she could take it for walks,” says her brother, Hasan.

Zohaib, 6, is sad as he is concerned about his goat. Covering it with his mother’s shawl, he says, “It has fever.” Trying very hard to feed the animal because it was not eating, his brother says they had even tried giving it coffee but it did not help the unwell goat.

Along with excitement and immense care for their own animals, children are also curious to see what kind of animals their neighbours have bought.

Many children living in the Cantt area describe how they all go together in groups to see the strongest and best animal in the area - cows and bulls mostly win while goats cannot even match the winning animal.

“Last year, it was a bull. He was so strong and fierce, we named him bullfighter,” says a little boy. Bullfighter ran away several times after breaking the rope and he finally had to be tied with a multi-fold nylon rope, he narrates. “We even have racing competitions in the night,” says another excited boy.

While most of the children say they like goats better, they admit that the joy of seeing a cow is definitely something else.

Zaid and Zain, two brothers aged seven and eight respectively, say their family had bought a cow because they preferred them to goats. Showing off their cow resting in a tent outside their apartment, they say they spend all their time after school with their cow. “We go out with our uncle to take the cow on a street trip,” says Zain. They stay with the cow and feed her as much as they can. Why? He innocently replies, “So we can get more meat out of her.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th, 2010.