The Difference A Day Can Make

The difference a day can make is tremendous. Today, there was joy in the air, bustling, thriving signs of life. Men walking bakras with thick ropes tied around their necks. The air smelled of wool and fuzz and unawareness, it smelled of obliviousness. The sun was shining down hard, cheerfully burning. The newer sellers were in ironed shalwaar kameez, the older jaded ones had wrinkled woolen versions of the local dress. Everywhere there were sheep and goats, braying and neighing. The smell was pungent, hitting you as soon as you left your car or came within walking distance. Like a blast of hot humid air on a warm summer afternoon. Everywhere, there were sheep and goats, speckled between them, managing their herds were the sellers, sometimes with kids running around, kids they had brought so as to show them the trade. People came up on motorcycles, dust swirling as they stopped, the engines roaring, the livestock taking no note, just grazing studiously on the piles of hay their owners had brought. Some came on cycles, to take note of the prices, a few came in old, small, worn down cars. The first group would take the animals back to the houses they worked at. The second would report the best prices and then come back in their motorcycles. The third would buy here, masters of themselves. Not enslaved by an outdated system kept in place only for people who wanted to feel superior.

The sun shone hard baking the already cracking ground. Dust swirled in eddies. Motorcycles roared towards the market, some were already parked, some were off, some with their engines still left running by callous owners, all of them warm, the seats almost steaming under the sun. The number of motorcycles was increasing as the day got older.

The evening brought with it fresh cooler wind, tinged with something ominous, yet something normal this time of year every year. Something that had been a tradition in this land for more than six hundred years. Something that had been started because they thought they were appeasing a god, but were in fact unwilling, unknowing harbingers of the destruction they would wreak upon the world.

In a dark room the very next day, somewhere else in the world, three men would roll a dice. It would tell them what was to come. But first today was to happen.

The goats brayed and neighed, a collective gasp of sighs, oblivious to the incoming oblivion.

The first would start early. It would be animals that were not purchased on this day, but had been bought at the behest of overly prepared people days earlier. Fed by them, a sign of grace and blessing. People that would go the extra mile. The first would start when such people were at prayers, ahead on the rugs, on the first few rows, there early. Smiling with the knowledge that their days were planned with precision, down to the second. The men they had hired would come, with their worn cloth bags, the objects inside clinking, the women would let them in, lead them to the animals. They would unfold the bags, they would set down the wooden planks, they would place the animals on them, say the incantation, and they would bring the knives down. Sharp, painless. Simple.

Down to the injunction.

Throughout the day, the sharp slicing through the air would continue, sometimes camels would be the victims. When the mass genocide was finished, a ritual at this point, no one knew that they were supposed to be appreciating and respecting the sacrifice. All just wanted to eat meat and be merry. When the day ended, a genocide would have taken place, thousands of lives wiped out like so many candles.

The next day, the same clearings that had been filled with livestock would be empty, the dust too would be mellow. The sun would be dim. A hush like a blanket over the world. That day, the men would roll the dice, and the process that would lead the world to its knees would begin.

The difference a day can make is tremendous.