Beef, it's what's for Eid.

This week is the week of the second Eid. It is my understanding that this Eid (Eid al-Adha), commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael. God of course provided a ram instead. You might also notice that the Islamic version involves Ishmael instead of the Jewish and Christian version which had Abraham offering Isaac.

This is the sacrifice Eid. All those who can afford to purchase an animal to sacrifice are supposed to do so and then divide the meat into 3 equal parts. One third goes to the family who bought it, one third goes to friends, neighbors, and relatives, and the final third goes to the poor and needy. In Dhaka, this means the streets flow with blood in the morning because most people who own property can afford a cow or goat here. The sacrifice is followed by lots of visiting and the consumption of more meat than one should ever consider rational. The limited experience I've had with visiting a family on Eid involved every dish (including the rice) having some form of meat in it.

Eid is also the worst time for traffic in Bangladesh. Most of those who live in Dhaka are actually from various villages all over Bangladesh. Everyone wants or is expected to go home to their village for Eid. This makes the already terribly crowded roads in Bangladesh a big logjam. Today is an exceptionally bad example of how horrible things can really get. In reaction to some political issues, the opposition party to the ruling party of government called for a transportation strike. This essentially means that no motorized vehicles besides ambulances are allowed to go anywhere from dawn to dusk. Now, add in the fact that today is right smack dab in the middle of the busiest annual transportation jam and you have yourself a real difficult situation. Tomorrow you'll have all the people who wanted to go today as well as all those who want to go tomorrow. This is the kind of thing that leads to situations like last year. Last year the timing of Eid meant that everyone wanted to leave on the same day. It took some of our staff up to 26 hours to get home by bus. Think how far you could get in the US in a 26 hour time period now imagine what it would be like if it took 26 hours for you to get to another portion of the state you live in because Bangladesh is only about the size of Illinois or Iowa.

That is why we as expats stay put wherever we are when it comes to Eid time. It may make like a bit boring but we kind of prefer boring to nightmarish.