Baba looked at him, thought for a second, and said: ‘Do you want your legs broken? I don’t care what you say now. Did you think about this when you went to the kanungo to complain?’
He then kept walking towards Sagal. Maan, however, was so troubled by the man’s look — half of hatred born of betrayal, half of supplication — that he stared at his deeply wrinkled face and tried to recall — as he had with the sarangi player — where he had seen him before.
‘What’s the story behind this, Baba?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Baba. ‘He wanted to get his grasping fingers on my land, that’s all.’ It was clear from his voice that he wished to dismiss the subject from his mind.
As they approached the school, the sounds of a loudspeaker could be heard repeating the praises of God or else telling the people to get ready for the Id prayers, and not to delay too long at the fair. ‘And, ladies, please make yourselves proper; we are about to start; please hurry up, everyone.’
But it was difficult to get the holiday-making crowd to hurry up. Some people, certainly, were performing their ritual ablutions by the edge of the tank; but most of them were milling around the stalls and the improvised market that had formed just outside the school gates along the length of the earthen embankment. Trinkets, bangles, mirrors, balloons — and, best of all, food of all kinds from alu tikkis to chholé to jalebis extruded spluttering into hot tawas, barfis, laddus, flossy pink candy, paan, fruit — everything that Mr Biscuit could have dreamed of in his least constrained imaginings. Indeed, Mr Biscuit was loitering near a stand with half a barfi in his hand. Meher, who had been given some sweets by her grandfather, was sharing them with other children. Moazzam, on the other hand, was busy befriending various vulnerable children—‘for their money’, as the shaven but mustachioed Netaji pointed out to Maan.
The women and girls disappeared into the school building, from where they would watch and participate in the proceedings, while the men and boys arranged themselves in rows on long rolls of cloth in the compound outside. There were more than a thousand men present. Maan saw among them several of the elders of Sagal who had given Rasheed so much trouble outside the mosque, but he did not see the sick old man whom Rasheed and he had gone to visit — not that in such a large gathering it was possible to be certain about who was not there. He was asked to sit on the edge of the verandah next to two bored policemen of the P.P. Police Constabulary, who lounged about in greenish khaki and surveyed the scene. They were there to see that order was maintained and to act as witnesses in case the Imam’s sermon contained anything inflammatory, but their presence was resented, and their manner betrayed that they knew it.
The Imam began the prayers, and the people stood up and knelt down as required with the awesome unanimity of the Islamic service. In the middle of the two snatches of prayers, however, there was a sound of distant thunder. By the time the Imam had begun his sermon, the congregation appeared to be paying more attention to the sky than to his words.
It began to drizzle, and the people started getting restless. Eventually they settled down, but only after the Imam had interrupted his sermon to upbraid them:
‘You! Don’t you have any patience in the sight of God — on the day we have met to remember the sacrifice of Ibrahim and Ismail? You put up with rain in the fields, and yet on this day you act as if a few drops of water will dissolve you away. Don’t you know how those who are doing the pilgrimage this year are suffering on the scorching sands in Arabia? Some of them have even died of heatstroke — and you are in terror of a few drops from the sky. Here I am talking about Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son, and all you are thinking of is keeping dry — you will not even sacrifice a few minutes of your time. You are like the impatient ones who would not come to prayer because the merchants had arrived. In the Surah al-Baqarah, the very surah after which this festival is named, it says:
Who therefore shrinks from the religion
of Abraham, except he be foolish-minded?
And later it says:
We will serve thy God and the God of thy fathers
Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, One God;
to him we surrender.
Is this the quality of your surrender? Stop it, stop it, good people; be still, and do not fidget!
Surely, Abraham was a nation
obedient unto God, a man of pure faith
and no idolater,
showing thankfulness for His blessings;
He chose him, and He guided him
to a straight path.
And We gave him in this world good,
and in the world to come he shall be
among the righteous.
Then We revealed to thee: “Follow thou
the creed of Abraham, a man of pure faith
and no idolater.”’
The Imam got quite carried away with his quotations in Arabic, but after a while he returned to his quieter discourse in Urdu. He talked about the greatness of God and his Prophet, and how everyone should be good and devout in the spirit of Abraham and the other prophets of God.
When it was over, everyone joined in asking for God’s blessings, and, after a few minutes, dispersed to their villages, making sure they returned by a different route from the one they had taken to arrive.
‘And tomorrow, being Friday, we’ll get another sermon,’ some of them grumbled. But others thought that the Imam had been at his best.
14.23
As he walked back into the village, Maan bumped into the Football, who drew him aside.
‘Where have you been?’ asked the Football.
‘To the Idgah.’
The Football looked unhappy. ‘That is not a place for us,’ he said.
‘I suppose not,’ said Maan indifferently. ‘Still, no one made me feel unwelcome.’
‘And now, you will watch all this cruel goat business?’
‘If I see it, I’ll see it,’ said Maan, who thought that hunting, after all, was as bloody a business as sacrificing a goat. Besides, he didn’t want to get into a false compact of solidarity with the Football, whom he did not greatly care for.
But when he saw the sacrifice, he did not enjoy it.
In some of the houses of Debaria, the master of the house himself performed the sacrifice of the goat or, occasionally, the sheep. (Cow sacrifice had been forbidden in P.P. since British times because of the danger of religious rioting.) But in other houses, a man specially trained as a butcher came around to sacrifice the animal that symbolized God’s merciful replacement for Abraham’s son. According to popular tradition this was Ishmael, not Isaac, though the Islamic authorities were divided on this matter. The goats of the village seemed to sense that their final hour was at hand, for they set up a fearful and pitiful bleating.
The children, who enjoyed the spectacle, followed the butcher as he made his rounds. Eventually he got to Rasheed’s father’s house. The plump black goat was made to face west. Baba said a prayer over it while Netaji and the butcher held it down. The butcher then put his foot on its chest, held its mouth, and slit its throat. The goat gurgled, and from the slash in its throat bright red blood and green, half-digested grass poured out.
Maan turned away, and noticed that Mr Biscuit, wearing a garland of marigolds that he must have somehow procured at the fair, was looking at the slaughter with a phlegmatic air.
But everything was proceeding briskly. The head was chopped off. The skin on the legs and underbelly was slit and the entire skin peeled off the fat. The hind legs were broken at the knee, then bound, and the goat was hung from a branch. The stomach was slit, and the entrails, with their blood and filth, were pulled out. The liver and lungs and kidneys were removed, the front legs cut off. Now the goat, which only a few minutes ago had been bleating in alarm and gazing at Maan with its yellow eyes, was just a carcass, to be divided in thirds among the owners, their families, and the poor.