A mission to collect as much meat as possible

Islamabad: As soon as the butcher starts wielding his knife for the sacrificial ritual on Eid day, the news instantly reaches the beggars, mostly women and children of all age groups, who roam around the streets throughout the Eid days on the mission to collect as much meat as possible.

Along with all other never-ending Eid-related chores, a problem that every household probably has to deal with is the beggars arriving at your gate who push and shove each other in a bid to get their share of meat. The problem is more intense in Rawalpindi.

Already holding bags full of meat in both hands and skilfully balancing more of it on their heads, these beggars roam the streets looking for the signs of sacrifice. Even if they don’t get any sign that sacrifice has taken place in any household, they still ring the bell or bang the door to try their luck of getting some meat.

For them, every part of the animal would do, be it the head or the tongue.”We look forward to this day throughout the year and my children get to eat plenty of meat during these days,” said Perveen, a beggar from the outskirts of Islamabad. While many of those out in search of meat are professional beggars, there are others who belong to slums located in and around town.

Interviews with these people revealed that they collect as much meat as they can and then store it for many days, sometimes months in different manners.

The whole family goes out in the city and disperses in different directions to cover as much area as possible.

Perveen says that they dried the meat with salt and preserved it for months. “We prefer not to stay in one place for more than six months and that is why we carry dried things with us,” said this mother of seven children. Some of them store their meat in the deep freezers of people whom they work for or with shopkeepers they know.

Accompanied by her four children, Anwar Jan said that shopkeepers charged Rs2 per day for storing their meat. She said that her husband rested at home because people prefer to give meat to women and children.“We will eat   all the meat that we have collected in one week because my husband’s relatives also live with us,” she said. Anwar said that there were some beggars who sell off the meat in slums at half the market price.

There is no doubt that this occasion partly helps address the deprivation faced by poverty stricken segments of the society.