CAIRO -
It is usual to hear the voices of street vendors chanting their goods in the streets of Cairo, but they disappear on Eid and leave the streets to the wandering butchers, who raise their voices with a hand chant on Eid al-Adha, "Butcher, butcher."
A wandering butcher master, as soon as he finishes the Eid prayer, carries his equipment and knives, taking his friend and assistant to a new destination, until they encounter someone who is looking for a butcher to slaughter the Eid sacrifice.
The master chooses easy sacrifices, such as goats and sheep, avoiding the slaughter of cows and calves. Large animals need three or four people to slaughter them, and then they take a long time in slaughtering and cutting, unlike the small ones.
Since the financial return from the slaughter of large animals is not huge, the sheep are the favorite of Sayed and his peers in the profession, so that he can return in the afternoon with the largest return from such a season, as they get in return for slaughtering and cutting the sheep or goats for about two hundred pounds (dollar = 16.50 pounds), as well as the remaining fur and skins from the slaughtered animal.
According to the experiences of the past years, the two friends' tours continue on the second day of Eid, if the slaughtering proceeds on the first day are not feasible.
Sayed works primarily as a "butcher boy" (butcher's assistant) in a large butcher shop in Cairo, and strives to obtain leave from the shop owner during the holidays.
The butcher profession is in vogue during Eid al-Adha in Egypt (Al-Jazeera)
Family profession
As for Zainab Ramadan, she is the smallest butcher that passers-by can see, as she finishes the Eid prayer to leave her peers rushing towards the sellers of cotton candy and balloons, and she clings to her father's hand as he roams the streets, calling a "butcher".
Zainab stands next to her father and brother while they slaughter the sacrifice. They eat the knives and hold the carcass with them and hang it, then they cooperate in cutting. The butcher’s profession has imbibed from her father, as she does not neglect one of the steps of the slaughter.
As for her father, the butcher Ramadan, he raises the slogan, “No one (no one) says to livelihood no,” whoever calls him in order to slaughter a cow rushes to him, although the traveling butchers refuse to slaughter large animals, because they are exhausting and take a long time and their financial return is close to the return of slaughtering the small.
Ramadan admits that the owners of sacrifices do not often prefer the traveling butchers, which is the same as Husam, a retired employee, confirms, explaining that he once tried to hire a traveling butcher, and was surprised that he was incompetent and looked as if he was a novice butcher trying slaughter for the first or second time.
A butcher and his wife sit in front of a carcass in a village in Minya in Upper Egypt (Reuters)
Butcher "delivery
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and Montaser - a marketing manager - pointed out that he agrees every year with the owner of a butcher's shop near his house, to send him at a specific time agreed upon in advance by one of his workers on his responsibility, and this method as confirms his singing about the "brain pain" resulting from Separation with a traveling butcher who asks for an exaggerated fee.
As for Suleiman - a retired school principal - he believes that slaughtering is easy and does not require the expertise of a butcher, as he was young helping his father the butcher, and today his two sons help him, as he bought tools for slaughter, hanging and cutting, and took from the roof of his house a place for slaughter, "there is the real joy of the sacrifice", not that Represented by the butcher "Delfrey" as he put it.
Usually the process of slaughter takes place in the streets, which is criminalized by the government, and the Ministry of Supply confirms that the law prohibits the slaughter of livestock outside government slaughterhouses, so the supply directorates, in coordination with the supply and veterinary investigations, launch intensive campaigns on butcher shops, as well as the streets where the “saddle” is established. It is iron on which meat is hung, and also on homes where cattle are slaughtered.
The ministry urges citizens to provide information or reports about those who carry out uncontrolled slaughter, and in the event that meat slaughtered outside government slaughterhouses and unfit for consumption is seized, a report is issued on the incident and referred to the prosecution and the meat is destroyed, and the judicial penalty is imprisonment for a year.
In the event that meat slaughtered outside slaughterhouses suitable for human consumption is seized, it will be confiscated and sold by the directorate, and the penalty is a fine, according to press statements by officials in the ministry.