Eating chicken after the first Eid al-Adha program in Manghirjee!

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Eating chicken after the first Eid al-Adha program in Manghirjee!

Educationist Sadullah Bayazit continues to narrate his friend-in-fate Abdulgani Gulmez’s life in Pakistan. In the tenth part of the memoirs, he wrote, in the words of Gulmez, the days Gulmez spent in Manghirjee and the relief program they organized there on Eid al-Adha.

Part Ten:

The Eid-al Adha program we had organized in 2002 in Manghirjee was also the first large-scale charitable campaign we organized in Khairpur Mirs. What’s more, we had been organized on collaboration basis in a very short time. It is a memory that I still remember 20 years later:

That year, Eid-al-Adha coincided with the month of February, during my stay in village Manghirjee. Mr. Atilla, the principal of our school in Karachi, offered us to have some of the sacrificial animals slaughtered in Khairpur Mirs. He also said that he would not be able to send anyone due to the lack of staff. Normally, I was alone there and there was only one week until the Eid. Moreover, we did not have enough money to buy the sacrificial animals. Moreover, because of the short time left until the Eid, the sacrificial animals in the town were either dispatched to the cities or were already sold.

We can solve the money problem, but we have to find the sacrificial animals!

I brought the subject up to Mr. Ali Mardan’s father. We had two problems; firstly, we did not have any cash in hand, secondly, it was difficult to find enough number of sacrificial animals in such a short time. Mr. Ali’s father said, “We will solve the money issue, but we need to look for the sacrificial animals, I don’t know how many we will be able to find.” I also received a promise from Mr. Atilla that the money for the sacrificial animals would be paid immediately after the Eid.

Within a week, we formed a group of 3-4 people from Mr.Ali’s brothers and other young people from the village. In groups, we searched for cattle suitable for our budget in the surrounding villages. As a result of our searches day and night, thankfully, we found about 10 cattle. Thanks to the Rahoojo family’s reference, we bought all of those animals on credit to pay off after the Eid.

They distributed all the meat to the needy

On the Eid, the sacrificial animals were slaughtered and their meat were cut, packaged and distributed collaboratively in the village. While I was thinking ‘how on earth will I able to cope with this organization by myself?’, the villagers supported the organization indispensably. Of course, after the Eid, I personally travelled to Karachi and received the amount for the purchase of the sacrificial animals in cash and we paid the animal owners their money. In that region, it was not possible to pay the animal dealers from the bank anyway. It was also a change in the routine and an occasion of refreshment which allowed me to get away from the tedious electricity, paint and whitewashing tasks a little bit.

One of the memories that I remember from that Eid as a unique experience was that we had slaughtered 10 cattle on the first day of the Eid, but I was served chicken in the lunch. Perhaps for the first and only time in my life, I ate chicken on the first day of Eid-al-Adha. As it can be understood from this article, the sacrificial meat never entered the Rahoojo household on that Eid: They had distributed them all to the needy.

To be continued…

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Part Nine: Our benevolent friends from Khairpur Mirs

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