Red handed

21:00 8 December 2008

Graphic Warning: If bloody scenes or descriptions of animal death bother you, do not read the first paragraph of this post.

I witnessed a double-homicide with an axe yesterday. Well, not so much witnessed as perpetrated, and not so much a double axe murdering as a chicken-killing. As the sole man in the house, I was requested to do the honors to two chickens that were slated to be eaten for Kourman Eid, a Muslim holiday. During the holiday people are supposed to host many guests and go guesting and we had elaborate preparations for the day. The killing was the first I had ever committed and it probably scarred me for life. Apparently I did a fine job, my axe blows fell strongly and swiftly and severed the heads in one blow, but I was shocked just how grisly the whole event was. Immediately after the beheading, the neck started streaming blood in nearly Quentin Tarantino-like proportions! The spurts of blood stained the concrete for up to ten feet away! I’d also heard about the actions of fowl whence beheaded and had heard about their lengthy death spells. While I didn’t watch a headless chicken run around (my host mother was kind enough to hold the condemned bird for its sentence and then hang it upside down most of the blood drained into a bucket), watching a bird’s body try and fly away from a grip without a head is certainly a sight and one that will haunt my memory for some time. I had blood on my hands, both figuratively and literally, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to truly wash myself of it.

The rest of the holiday and the preparations were really nice. Saori, my JICA friend, doesn’t live with a host family so we invited her over to assist our preparations and to be part of our family for the holiday. We all cleaned, cooked, and prepared the celebratory table together and it was a great, if exhausting, experience. We prepared the obligatory plov, Kyrgyz baklava (not as good as Turkish/Greek baklava but still delicious, a vinegrat salat, home made chips (yummy!), borsok (Kyrgyz national fried bread), a spicy cabbage salat, and other sweet desert dishes with honey. In addition to these, my host mother asked us to prepare some of our own dishes so I made some pumpkin fritters which were okay, but they were far outshined by the Sushi that Saori made (or at her insistence Sush-type food since it wasn’t Sushi in a purest sense). Regardless it was delicious, and it was amazing to have semi-authentic Japanese food, definitely not something I expected to be sampling in Kyrgyzstan.

In addition to hosting three waves of guests on our own, Saori and I made time to visit one of the students from our leadership club. He had invited us, and while he was a multi-mile walk, it was nice seeing him outside of the club and in his own element. Overall, it was my favorite holiday so far in Kyrgyzstan. I got to play host and make other people eat and drink, this time it was me being the one to say “Kooshai! Kooshai!” While I did play that role emphatically, when it came to pouring vodka shots, I was significantly more receptive to some guests’ wishes for “just a little” than my host mother. After I was finished pouring, she went around again and filled everyone’s up to the brim. Oh sweet revenge…