Demotix/Paolo Gargini. All rights reserved.As a child I made a brief but close friendship. Every day for two consecutive weeks, I would go share what had taken place in my day. My friend seldom talked back except for a grunt here and there, but when I talked, he listened. It was only when his head was chopped off in front of me that he screamed, then died in silence. The cherry on top: his meat tasted epically delicious.
After my friend was slaughtered for the Al Adha feast, my memories of him, like his meat, went in vain. This took place every year. I spent years and years enjoying rare/blue meat, but at the same time I had developed a phobia to living four-legged animals. However, I took this phobia for-granted as being part of my ‘nature’, as many people do, and never thought that it could be connected to my childhood four-legged friend.
Until one day I decided to become a vegetarian. It was then that my hostility and disdain to animals began to diminish. I no longer freaked out when a dog was within a one-mile radius, or felt disgusted when a friend pet a street cat. Most significantly, I now recall every detail of my friendship with my four-legged friend. It seems like I had been forcing myself to believe that animals were not only inferior but also evil; a belief I definitely needed to indulge as a child to justify the ingestion of my friend.
