An Account of a First Slaughter

There is the account of one of the first exercises of this kind, a memorably traumatic one, from some thirty-five years earlier: a father who, once his son had reached the age of puberty, judged it time to teach him to slaughter a chicken. They went together to Victoria Market and bought a bird already wrapped tightly in newspaper, so that only a little of one leg and the beak showed at the front, like the petals of a flower. The father (may Allah give him a long life) instructed him to go into the bathroom alone, where a knife had been left in the bathtub: to hold the beak, step on the feet, and step also on the wings, before saying Bismillāh, Allāhu akbar. The boy, confident, locked the door so that no one could come in, and judged for himself that there was no need to hold the legs or the wings, since the newspaper was already wrapped so tightly around the bird. All that seemed necessary was to pull the beak and say the words.

Before Bismillāh, Allāhu akbar could be said, the chicken broke free. Blood went everywhere; the whole bathroom turned red — quite a drama, by his own account. His mother could be heard asking what was being done to her bathroom, and his father calling through the door to ask whether it had been killed yet, telling him to hold on to it. Eventually the chicken was caught again, still alive, and, alḥamdulillāh, Bismillāh, Allāhu akbar was said as it was properly slaughtered. Had the bird died before those words were said, the meat would have been ḥarām regardless of everything that followed: an animal slaughtered only after it has already died cannot be eaten.