DATELINE DREAMLAND — We must have gotten lost. My wife and I were on the road. It was a long trip, and it seemed to be in a foreign country, although we had a common language with the locals. We pulled over, rather than get more disoriented, and soon saw a native family in the distance, around a fire, next to an older, white camper vehicle.
I walked over to ask for directions. Their camp was just within sight, and my wife could barely see it in the fading light of dusk. The group comprised a couple of women and four men of varying ages. The elder of the group was obvious. He was mature, with an authority about him, but he was not old and gray at all. By complexion and hair, they seemed Persian/Iranian, but the setting was middle European, hilly green forest.
He was the only one to speak to me, and the directions he gave were clear. Yet he insisted I sit and be welcome, just for a few minutes. While these people weren’t cuddly sit-on-the-porch Southerners, they were sincere and we made amiable small talk.
Time was slipping away, though, so I stood to leave. My wife was there in our car, at the crest of that hill, I again pointed out. The lush setting could have been one of the locales of Anthony Bourdain’s Travel Channel food-a-logue series No Reservations.
“Please, eat with us. Wave to your wife to join us. We don’t have strangers come by often. We would enjoy the company,” the elder said.
As politely as I could, I declined. He wouldn’t hear of it. We then engaged in that sort of uncomfortable yet friendly banter where two men argue over treating the other to a restaurant meal.
“I’ll slaughter a lamb. We’ll have a feast,” which he thought would move me to stay. Tethered nearby were two lambs. I sure didn’t want them to go to that trouble, the hours it would take, not to mention we’re vegetarian.
Wasn’t I being as helpful to them as well as to myself? Across the world, regular people created feasts with meat only for holidays or to welcome strangers. I was a stranger, yes, but not that kind. They should do as they would have done if we kept driving.
My host listened with quiet amusement and walked over to untie one of the lambs.
“I get it,” I said. “You have to welcome the stranger. It’s tradition. It’s religion. I might be an angel, rewarding your generosity or punishing your selfishness. It’s a basic parable, in the origins of Judaism and Christianity and Islam. Not to mention Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. I assure you, I am just a traveler. Your offer counts just as much as our coming to sit at your picnic table. I’m fine.”
The clan elder produced a knife almost as big as a machete. He held the lamb at the neck. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “We have another lamb for later.”
“Wait!” I said. “Eat as you choose, but I am leaving now, regardless. Thanks for the road directions.”
The man slit the animal’s throat. I turned away quickly enough to not see the act but returned. The ground was bloody. The lamb was quiet, unexpectedly peaceful while drawing its last breaths. More surprising, the tethered remaining lamb was calm, oblivious to the demise of the first.
Nauseous and angry, I stalked back to our car, sure my wife could not see what happened from her vantage.
Skimming over the details, I told her what happened. The directions indicated we only had a short drive left before our destination, where we were to stop for the night. Hungry, she wanted to hang out there a little longer, to eat the egg salad sandwiches we had made that morning.
As we cleaned crumbs off the car seats, the elder walked up. He carried a chunk of well-cooked meat, so tender it was falling off the bone. I wondered at how the hours had passed for this to have come about.
His eyes insisted. So I ate some of the lamb.
Copyright 2009 Ben S. Pollock
