Member-only story
The lamb story
When I was six years old, my father returned home one day with a live lamb in the trunk of his car.
He got it out of the car and housed it on the roof of the apartment building in the city of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf where we were living at that time.
Every day after school, the neighborhood kids and I would run the stairs of the building’s six floors and get to the roof to feed the lamb, which was attached with a leash to a cement structure.
We fed the sheep various eclectic food, from salami to Labneh to hummus and pita bread.
The lamb, whom I might have given a name, was my first pet of many animals I would adopt later in life.
A few weeks after my dad brought the lamb to the house, I opened the fridge one morning looking for some water, and there in the middle of the fridge was the head of my lamb, placed in a round aluminum tray.
I shrieked and closed the fridge immediately. Nobody heard me.
That evening, my parents had a big feast. They invited their friends for a plate of Mansaf: rice, yogurt, bread, and lamb meet. Sitting on top of the main plate, from which the guests scooped food with their hands, was the head of the lamb, my lamb.
I skipped dinner that night.
