December 19, 2007 3:33

The Big Eid

Preparations for the Muslim festival of sacrifice (Eid al Adha ), a four-day holiday commemorating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael, began this morning at dawn at slaughterhouses and butcher shops across Beirut. By tradition, celebrants slaughter sheep or goats and donate the meat to charities, to the poor, or distribute it to friends and neighbors.

The sheep are first weighed to make sure they are about 26 stone and one year old. To ensure that the meat is halal (ritually clean) butchers slit the animals' jugular veins in one steady stroke, then offer a quick prayer -- "In the name of God, God is Great" -- while blood drains from the jerking bodies of the dying beasts.

Like so many holidays, Eid is for many a celebration of continuity and community, as families gather early in the morning to visit the graves of departed relatives, wash the tombstones, and decorate them with greenery, flowers and burning incense. But for others, the day is a reminder of the jarring loneliness of life and of sacrifices unwillingly made. In a large cemetery in West Beirut, one women showed me a photograph of her daughter, murdered three years ago when she unknowingly triggered a bomb hidden in a portable stereo that had been sent to an uncle involved in a family feud over money. The girl was 19 years-old, was studying at the Lebanese American University to be a pharmacist, and had gotten married three months earlier. "Every time I come here, I am shocked to see her name on the tomb," she said.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut