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  I manage to stand up and, leaning casually on the edge of the desk, observe the night watchman seated on the opposite side. After a moment, he looks over at me and nods sympathetically.

  My professional conscience forces me to make sure that Scott Burdett has found his way back to his room. And so I go up to the third floor. At the end of the hallway, I see a body lying on the carpet. Beside it, an empty suitcase and piles of clothes in a jumble. Scott lets out a snore that leaves no question as to the state of his health.

  Reassured, I begin to walk away when I hear a noise coming from his room. I press my ear against the door’s varnished wood. I’ve guessed right: someone is crying in there.

  I knock twice, and the door opens immediately. Tina Marie Kinworthy is in tears, her face damp, her features ravaged by grief. She recognizes me and calms down a bit, then looks behind me at the mass of Scott’s sleeping body. She nearly chokes at the sight. “The son of a bitch! Oh, the bastard!” she hisses, releasing all her fury.

  “Shhh,” I say. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “He wanted to . . . he wanted to . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “He came back here at four in the morning, completely drunk, with a . . . a . . . with a woman of ill repute!” she finally spits out. “Do you realize? When we’ve just gotten engaged!”

  I gaze at her for a moment with my most compassionate expression. “Men are bastards,” I say.

  Tina Marie nods in agreement, a sorrowful look on her face, once again on the verge of tears. She trembles slightly in her negligee.

  I take her by the waist, I lead her gently to her room, I close the door behind me with my foot, and I whisper in her ear: “Tell me everything, Tina Marie. That’s what I’m here for. You’ll feel much better afterward, I’m sure of it. Only muddy streams flow in darkness.”

  I don’t know why, but I have the feeling tomorrow’s lecture on the Flemish primitives—or rather, today’s—is going to find itself slightly shortened, to my great regret.

  R I T U A L: Diary of Flesh and Faith

  BY KENAN GÖRGÜN

  Anderlecht Abattoirs

  Cities, like forests, have their caverns in which all the most wicked and formidable creatures which they contain conceal themselves. Only, in cities, that which thus conceals itself is ferocious, unclean, and petty, that is to say, ugly; in forests, that which conceals itself is ferocious, savage, and grand, that is to say, beautiful. Taking one lair with another, the beast’s is preferable to the man’s.

  —Victor Hugo

  1.

  The Feast of the Sacrifice: along with Ramadan, the most important holiday of the Muslim year. The events I am about to relate took place during the last Eid al-Adha. In Turkish, the language of my ancestors, the festival is known as kurban bayrami; bayram means “holiday” and kurban means “sacrifice,” but refers also to the sacrificed animal, as if the act and its consequence had become one, as if crime and victim were no longer distinguishable. It all began with my desire to film reportage on this unique celebration: on the same day all around the world, thousands of believers slaughter thousands of animals, literally spilling their blood. Do you know of many traditions that have remained essentially unchanged for centuries? I’m not talking about primitive rites or obscure ceremonies, but a ritual observed by more than a million individuals. Laborers, artisans, businessmen, researchers, musicians, politicians, diplomats; Muslims today hold positions in just about every sector of society imaginable. And once a year, they cut the throats of millions of beasts and celebrate their faith in a bath of blood. No part of this ritual has given way to its symbolic representation; preserved in all its original violence, it is, I believe, the only major religious celebration that has not become a romanticized version of itself. Blood is spilled today as it was in ancient times. There is no dramatization here, no playacting. Here, as in the recording that follows, everything is real.

  So begins the letter I found in my mailbox yesterday morning. A letter, accompanied by a DVD, which continues:

  A more or less obscure journalist with no job security, I was motivated, in part, by the need to advance my career. To make a name for myself. Nothing reprehensible, nothing transcendent. I told anyone who would listen that I wanted to film behind the scenes of the festival as no one had before. I would start at the market where the animals are bought and sold. With my camera on my shoulder and its focus set on eternity, I would immortalize the killing of these creatures. Already I could see the rough, textured shots, the close-ups of shanks and intestines, the hides ripped from layers of fat, entrails spilling everywhere. I wanted to film the squalor of this celebration and leave the beauty outside the frame. Considering that I’m of Turkish descent, and that my family is Muslim, there’s reason to think I’m settling personal scores. I’ve always been against bloodshed, even if I don’t mind a plate of lamb chops—the hypocrisy of all urban meat eaters who can’t stand the sight of blood, coupled with the latent disdain of a Muslim child tired of explaining what he believes in, and why he is often tempted to believe in nothing. And, in the end, I did what I set out to do . . . but for one detail. But for one detail, I was given all that I wanted. Only, I hadn’t imagined the atrocity would go so far. The atrocity, and my comprehension of it.

  K., my “guide,” asked me if I wanted to “film something interesting.” I had no idea what he meant by this. What I did know was that I wanted to tear the mask from the face of ancient Islam, to show that When-the-World-Is-in-Such-Miserable-Shape-It’s-Disgraceful-to-Unleash-So-Much-Violence-on-Innocent-Animals. And if I felt I was disturbing the ghosts who sleep nestled in the cradle of legends, I soon came to see that this darkness was not specific to Islam, nor to Muslims, but to human beings in general. I found myself confronted with more masks; that of the Christian, and beneath it another, that of the ancestral Jew. Was it all a farce? A mirage? These sons of man multiplied: white, black, yellow, red, flatheaded, slant-eyed, all murmuring in a single, muted, obstinate voice: “We are legion, and we have been here since the beginning. Our differences are nothing but smoke and mirrors. We are all made of the same clay; our fears and our lies, too, are the same. Since the dawn of time, we have given our blood and taken the blood of our brothers. We have heard this blood crying out to us from the ground. It begged us to stop. Stop what? If you are among the suffering, then you already know. If you are among the oppressors, then it happens that you forget, as you’ve forgotten how to put yourself in another’s place. For a moment, the blood that flows in the veins of the living and the blood that springs from the veins of the dying are no longer alike. Do not forget this illusion of difference between those who leave and those who remain. Blood knows that it is the same everywhere, that man alone perceives a difference: inside his body, it is life; outside his body, death. This illusion lasts only a moment, the time it takes for your final breath to leave your body. ‘What have you done to one another?’ This is what our blood cries out, and we have refused to listen.”

  I quote K.: “Jews, Christians, Muslims; we have all betrayed God, but the Muslims’ betrayal is the most serious. For we are the last ones, and we ought to have known.” As I read these words, I felt a shiver pass through me. No sane person would make such claims. I should have known better, I should never have agreed to be his witness.

  2.

  The text you are about to read is the transcript of a documentary. The package containing the letter and the DVD was neither stamped nor postmarked: it was slipped discreetly into my mailbox. After watching the film, it took me some time to decide what to do about it. I was tempted to consider this work the fruit of a deranged mind, intent on exploiting religious tensions for profit. Then I realized I had it all wrong; the film is an unflinching account of the violence of our time, and how this violence, in its encounter with false idols, threatens our humanity itself. It is both a terrible indictment and a desperate plea. The date on which I received the package might be a clue as to the mental state of its send
er, the filmmaker, presumably (who remains anonymous, never turning the camera on himself): two days before the Feast of the Sacrifice, while the Muslim community was bristling with excitement, I discovered these unbearable and nevertheless fascinating images. The footage, according to the letter, dates from last year’s festival. Why would he have waited so long? I finally came to accept their truth. For it was well-founded. Not moderate—radical, to the contrary—but just.

  What truth? That of K., his guide, and of K.’s family, more traditional and fervent than most I have known; yet, but for one detail, he was given all he wanted.

  Two days before Eid, the investigators are working against the clock, fearing the reprisals these images might provoke, should they fall into the wrong hands—for what they show us, as outrageous as it seems, happens every year. In forty-eight hours, millions of believers will celebrate their faith. In forty-eight hours, the horrors exposed by the film will be repeated.

  3.

  The camera moves along an ordinary street paved with loose, uneven cobblestones. The buildings are narrow, five or six stories high, with single-glazed windows, their cracked facades crisscrossed with bare cables. Under the cornices, the leaden sky casts a pallid light on the windows, where clouds are reflected in wavering pools like the milky whites of gouged-out eyes.

  “I grew up here—these streets were our playground. Where have all the children gone? I don’t see any. And yet, compared to the middle-class neighborhoods, where reproduction is a carefully planned affair, this is where fresh blood hums—on these streets bordered by the Anderlecht and Molenbeek municipalities, the working class watches its dreams pass by, along with the barges on the Charleroi canal. Children, we would throw garbage bags into its greenish water. One morning, we pulled up a blue-faced Moroccan—a father, himself an orphan—bloated and dead. Another time, it was my cousin who surfaced, as though regurgitated, tied to a car that had carried away part of the balustrade. His face beaten beyond recognition, his anus burned with cigarettes, he’d been tortured by former business partners. Cocaine trafficking. No one had suspected him of being a dealer. The last time the canal showed me a glimpse of the hidden face of things was on a night when some friends and I saw a man hurl his bag into the water; it came open in midair and out flew three revolvers, three blackbirds diving into the murky depths. And since that night, death has followed me wherever I go, swinging its scythe, cleaving bodies from souls. Those who live here share an aversion to the world, and the world returns the sentiment.”

  We see two men dragging a sheep by a rope tied around its woolly neck. One of them addresses the camera: “What do you think you’re filming, eh?” The sight of men towing a sheep in the street is generally considered anachronistic. A question of context.

  “I learned this in school: a woman wearing a bikini on the beach draws attention only in proportion to her good looks. On an avenue, the same woman in the same outfit would be the object of everyone’s attention, as though she were walking on the beach in a tailored suit and heels. Good journalism attempts to find the false note at the heart of an unremarkable score. These men and their sheep, here, in the city, are a perfect example. There is a certain violation of intimacy, of an unspoken pact; things we aren’t supposed to see are momentarily exposed on the street under the pressure of circumstances: the parking lot was full, no spots left near the exits, and so they had a greater distance to travel between the protected spaces of car and covered market. In a Muslim country, this same tableau provokes no particular reaction: men hold their sheep on leashes as though they were walking dogs, while two blocks away, a nervous steer attempts to escape its owners. The animal runs back and forth from the sidewalk into the middle of the street, hooves skidding as drivers honk and shout from open windows. His pursuers hurl insults from one end of the street to the other, like a soccer team changing strategy midfield. The cow sees all possible escape routes cut off; terrified, it attacks. One man throws himself beneath the animal, while another lashes him repeatedly with a cane. Once they’ve managed to beat it into submission, these same men joke among themselves: such are the hazards of the festival! Muslims will ask me: ‘And so what? You don’t eat meat?’ It’s not the consumption of flesh that disturbs one, but the immediacy of the violence, the return to a time before industrialization, when animals were slaughtered by hand rather than by machines that deliver them ground and boneless. For many, the presence of bones and joints is intolerable. More so even than blood, it reminds us that our portion of meat comes from a larger whole—bones, joints, flesh, and all—that was the living animal itself.”

  In a wide-angle shot, we see the entrance to the Anderlecht abattoir. Filmed from the other side of rue Ropsy Chaudron, the impressive dome reaches a height of thirty meters, making the slaughterhouse a site as recognizable as the Atomium with its nine steel-clad spheres. Two massive statues of bulls flank the entrance, looking ready to charge. As a child, I had to walk down this street on my way to school, and this facade always intimidated me, especially the bulls with their bulging muscles; I sensed in them a terrible anger, petrified in the bronze. From its perch on the brow of one of the bulls, a pigeon contemplates the animals in their pens below, living but hardly any freer than the statues, the ground beneath their hooves covered in straw and feces. The market’s passages swarm like those of a medieval city-state, bustling with men in search of a bargain. At the intersection of two alleys, a group of around twenty stands engrossed in debate, their chatter mingling with the music played over the loudspeakers. A man with a cigarette hanging from his lips walks over to the group. He carries a cardboard tray with cups of coffee, tendrils of steam rising and dancing with the smoke of cigarettes. The camera follows the movement of the spirals; instead of dissolving, they grow thicker and thicker, soon filling the frame. Then, a series of spliced shots: a jet of steam escaping from a vent; a duct pipe; a kebab cart; strips of meat cooking on the grill. Two men assemble sandwiches one after another: meat, lettuce, and garlic sauce, accompanied by a carton of aryon (a yogurt-based drink, nearly impossible to find ten years ago, now served at every self-respecting Turkish snack joint in the city). One of the customers inadvertently drops a slice of kebab.

  The timing is perfect, as they say: the camera zooms in on this piece of meat while a customer stops in front of the caravan, holding a billy goat on a leash. The goat sees the meat, stretches out his snout, sniffs, draws back, sniffs again, then strongly exhales, as though sneezing, or trying to expel the odor of a fellow creature’s flesh.

  Cut.

  Then, eight sheep hides hung out to dry. One can easily distinguish the parts that covered the thighs, the back, the shoulders. Seen from the front, these hides resemble men who’ve been ordered to put their hands up, or insurgents before a firing squad, frozen in horror. Farther away, other hides are drying on the ground, their humanoid forms even more striking, calling to mind the white chalk outlines that police trace around bodies at the scene of a crime. When a customer has the animal butchered at the market, he can choose to keep the hide or leave it with the vendor. Most will take the fur, at the request of their wives. At home, the wool is cleaned in a bath of scalding water, then used to stuff mattresses. I slept on such mattresses throughout my childhood. And yet my dreams were never haunted by the souls of the animals flattened out beneath me.

  A man in blue work overalls walks in front of the camera and unlatches the door to a pen. It creaks open on its hinges, and the sheep back away. The man grabs hold of one of them. “This one?” The customer, standing in the alley, points at another animal stamping its hooves on the ground. The vendor unceremoniously drags this sheep over by its wool. “Three hundred fifty euros. A handsome animal. Hardly any fat on him.” The customer takes a long look without stepping into the pen. “You said that last year . . . We threw out several pounds of fat.” The merchant pats the sheep on its side; not affectionately, only to show its heft. “Three hundred twenty, last offer.” Here, vendors hawk their wares as slave trad
ers once did. They speak of race, of weight, of pedigree; they urge you to feel the back muscles, to examine the teeth. At this market, men do to animals what not long ago they did to their brothers. Nothing guarantees that, tomorrow, they won’t enslave one another again. At this point, the filmmaker cuts to a long shot of the abattoir: beasts and men.

  “My objective was to show that men, like animals, form herds. The pen does not, in fact, create the flock, any more than the market creates the human crowd. The flock creates the shepherd. By this same instinct, men create dictators. And prisons, office buildings, football stadiums, military bases, housing projects—all of these communal spaces in which the constant repetition of an action is enough to make it seem acceptable, when in reality it is anything but: it’s easier to shoot a man if hundreds of soldiers around you are doing the same; it’s easier to believe in the unseen if thousands of others swoon before its beauty; to point your finger at a sheep and watch him pass into the hands of a butcher, while you would be incapable of hurting it if you met it on a path in the countryside. I could go on for a long time. Instead of complaining about his lack of freedom, man should ask himself if he is capable of living free. He declares his own goodness at the top of his lungs, when it would be much more convincing to simply be good.”

  The camera, hidden, films a group of men at knee level. Gathered around a vendor, they haggle over the price of a steer and the distribution of its meat among them. One of the potential buyers has backed out, raising the cost of each share. “That comes out to more than two hundred fifty euros per person—it’s too much.” “We won’t go over two hundred.” “You’ve seen the animal, he’s superb,” says the vendor. “You’ll get more meat per person! . . . All right, fine, go find someone else and come back and see me . . . I’m not going anywhere.” Several pairs of legs move toward the bargaining circle; we wonder if someone is going to join the pool. Then another pair approaches, bends, crouches down: K., the future guide, enters the frame, face angled downward, as if he were tying his shoes. He has brown, close-cropped hair; bony, well-defined features. His starched white shirt collar is folded out over his black coat. K. turns discreetly toward the camera. There’s a dazzling light in his green eyes, as much from their iridescent color as the intensity of his gaze. Then K. smiles faintly, winks, stands up, and becomes a pair of legs once more.