Slaughtered Goats At Sunrise - Part Two

Nothing Much Happening in the Village.

This is the second and final entry on Slaughtered Goats at Sunrise.

Clouds came scudding over the ramparts of Jebel Shams, ameliorating the sharp mountain sun and leaving the day warm but not oppressively hot.
The village had gone quiet as families gathered in private courtyards to carve up the morning's butchery and prepare meals for the remaining days of Eid Al Adha. Only a few goats wandering around kept me company as I walked back to my host's house where I made my way to our room and lay down for a nap.
My son had wandered of with some village kids and was probably herding goats or throwing stones somewhere out of sight, freedom he'd rarely have in the city.

An hour or so later the blade of the knife sang as I scraped it over the sharpening stone. Our host, Badr (Arabic for full moon,) fingered his knife to test its edge, all the while having a boisterous conversation through open windows with his mother and sisters who were bustling about inside. It seemed like I was the subject of the conversation, the women still wary of this stranger in thier house.

Badr, always smiling, starts the afternoon's butchery

Between us, on a large multi-coloured groundsheet, chunks of cow and goat quivered on platters and in plastic basins. We worked together, me holding the hunks of meat , Badr slicing them into long slivers and then dicing the slivers up into bite sized chunks, tossing them into big enamel bowls. He worked quickly but surely, the keen blade zipping past my fingers with millimetres to spare. Bones and tougher bits were sundered by axe on a small chopping block.

We worked steadily into the afternoon reducing the whole cow into piles of cubes, no steaks, chops or other cuts I'd consider the normal product of butchery. Spoonsful of a spice mix were tossed over the heaps and mixed through by hand, coating everything with a powdery crust. The aroma rich and heady in the afternoon.

And then the skewering began.

The women brought out bundles of pre-soaked bamboo skewers and deftly threaded the chunks on them, goat meat kebabs put one side and beef kebabs the other. They were a small family and I was surprised at the prodigious piles of kebabs that simply grew and grew. Being replete from the earlier, and rather filling, breakfast of mukli and the inevitable rounds of coffee and Halwa, I just couldn't imagine making any sort of meaningful dent in all those skewers. I asked Badr about this and he responded that the meat was for the next day and that the fires would be lit before sunrise so that the barbecue could begin. He used that exact word - barbecue - but rolled the 'r's in his Arabic accent , 'barrr-b-kyoo'.
But this evening, he said, they'd start cooking in the tinoor* and if I walked up behind the village a bit I could see the tinoor being prepared.

Dead wasps fill a trap suspended in a tree, hung to protect the beehives from predatory wasps.

Not knowing what on earth a tinoor was I set forth, guided by the boys who had returned from wherever they'd been. Instead of following the meandering course of the small wadi, Sultan guided me through the dry grass and the trees, stopping to inspect a trap filled with hundreds of dead wasp. The wasps around here are scary, abdomens almost the size of the first joint on my thumb, and are carnivorous. A few years ago I witnessed a dead snake being snipped apart, sliver by tiny sliver, by these wasps, their mandibles excising a tiny chunk of flesh that was carried off somewhere before the wasp returned for next chunk. They threaten the beehives by going in and killing and eating the bees, so the village has traps dotted throughout it to catch as many wasps as they can manage. Each trap I saw had hundreds of wasp corpses, I had never realised that there were so many wasps in such barren mountains.

An inferno rises from a pit-oven being prepared to cook Shuwa.

Soon we came upon Badr's brother who was tending a great fire, the heat was intense and he had to avert his face or shield it with his arm every time he re-arranged the logs, poking at them with a long stick. The tinoor, a pit-oven sunk into the ground, was about chest deep and some 3 feet square, lined carefully with stones to prevent the sides from collapsing, and capped by a steel frame. Nearby lay a steel 'lid' that would later be placed over the frame to complete the oven. The ground wasn't loose soil but weathered scree and gravel, so the digging of the pit must have taken a lot of hard labour and gallons of sweat.

Even out here cellphones are regularly checked for messages.

I sat on a nearby rise taking in the scene, majestic mountains as the backdrop, a roaring fire, sparks flying upward and the sun streaming from behind thick clouds.

Walking back to the village I came across another tinoor, this time a round one rather than square. In a barrow lay the flayed heads of the day's slaughter, along with the spines and other pieces that couldn't be used in a kebab.
A group of men joked and laughed as they wrapped these pieces in heavy tinfoil, rather than the traditional banana leaf sacking, and tied them up with strips torn from an old dishdash.

Wrapping the meat before it goes into the tinoor.

After some time the fire in the pit had burnt to a pile of glowng coals and the group, each manning a tinfoil package, took up station around it. Two of them picked up a heavy metal disk while others stood by with wheelbarrows filled with dirt and gravel.

Getting ready to make the drop. Don't be fooled by the traditional garb, in this photograph are engineers, technicians, teachers, businessmen and students, returned from far and wide for the Eid celebrations.

At a signal the package-men rapidly dropped the wrapped heads into the coals followed swiftly by the disk being placed over the tinoor and, lastly, the barrows were emptied on and around the edges to seal it off.

Time is of the essence, seconds after the meat is dropped the lid is laid over.

Pouring gravel around the edges to seal the oven off. The meat will bake for two days.

It took less than a minute, but the meal, called shuwa, would be cooked in the pit-oven for up to 48 hours until the meat simply dropped off the bones, succulent and fragrant from a mélange of spice.
For the umpteenth time that day coffee, dates and halwa were served, all of us sitting on a groundsheet and me being peppered with questions and jokes, most of it in Arabic. The day's work had been done and slowly the group drifted away to prepare for evening prayer at the small village mosque.

No task would be complete without some coffee, fruit and halwa. The nicest pomegranates I've ever eaten were from this village.

An evening of visits to various houses and more cups of coffee followed, but after the day's activity I was only too happy to place my mattress on the floor and drop off into black sleep, knowing that I'd be up before sunrise again for the big morning 'bar-b-kyoo'.

I felt as if I'd just fallen asleep when the chime of Badr's phone alarm went off, he rose and got ready for prayer by the glow of phone's LCD panel. I rolled over and tried to burrow deeper under the blanket but to no avail, I knew sleep was unlikely, so gave up and got out of bed, shook my son awake and got dressed.
I waited for a while outside the mosque, listening to the emanating murmur. After some time the morning prayer ended and men, wrapped to keep out the cold, hurried off to start the highly anticipated day.

The mosque, or more correctly masjid, center of village life.

On the previous day I'd seen a long trench dug at one end of the village and piled high with firewood, so that's where I headed. I was met by one of the friendly old men of the village and two youngsters who lit the fire as I approached, the dessicated wood igniting quickly and the flames spreading rapidly through the pile. Few things smell as good as woodsmoke permeating crisp pre-dawn air.




As the flames died to coals a stream of platters, piled high with a seemingly endless supply of kebabs, flowed from the nearby houses. Two long steel bars, welded with crosspieces at intervals to keep them parrallel and just the right distance apart to rest a skewer, were placed over the coals and the barbecuing began in earnest.
Kebabs were clapped in folding grids while others were simply placed side by side on the bars and continuously turned to prevent burning. Within minutes the aroma of roasting spices and meat permeated the mountain air and my stomach gurgled in anticipation, it wasn't long before the first smoky skewer was pressed into my hands with admonishments to "eat", "eat, you are welcome!"

The early morning kebab production line. Barbecue Omani-style.

Just like the sacrifice of the day before, there was no single village barbecue, but groups gathered together at various locations throughout the village, so having spent what I thought was the right amount of time not to appear rude I made my way to where Badr and his family were preparing their meal. Being a smaller family their fire was a lot more modest, but with the spectacular backdrop of mountains turned golden in the rising sun.

My son eating breakfast while Badr, wrapped against the chill, wields a spade to add fresh coals from a feeder fire.

Still more kebabs made their appearance and we ate them, piping hot, as they came off the fire, our hosts making certain that we tried both goat and cow. The spices were strong but not overpowering, complementing the rich flavour of the meat rather than overpowering it.

And still the meat keeps coming.

Both my son and I finally reached a point where we could not even think about eating another bite, yet still more kebabs were brought to be cooked. Although I would have loved to stay another day or so to witness the opening of the tinoor and relish the richness of two-day baked meat, but the east coast beckoned and we had a long drive ahead of us.

It was hard to bid the village goodbye, a large group turned out to say farewell and packages of food were thrust upon us with unending generosity. As our LandCruiser climbed the winding dirt track that led us out of the valley my son looked back and I knew that he would never forget the village, the people, the generosity of spirit, the welcome ... nor the slaughtered goats at sunrise.


*tinoor - I may have heard this incorrectly and it could have been 'tindoor'.

Craig
sunburnt ... and in need of a shave