10th February
Bethlehem.
I think the fact I had been imagining the moment I first saw the cooked heads, meant that when it finally happened, in some sense it was an anti-climax. This is a sentence I doubt I would have written had I not been invited to join in the annual feast of a local family, as they enjoyed the traditional meal of goats’ heads, feet, stomachs and intestines. Before I go any further, this is not as bad as you are probably imagining so do read on, unless you are particularly squeamish.
In honesty, I was as attracted to this occasion as much by curiosity as by outright desire, and I made sure I was hungry when I went so as to be able to pay the compliment of eating lots. The dish is as follows, and is an approximation based on what I saw, and what I understood of what I was told.
Firstly, the stomachs and intestines must be washed thoroughly with a mixture of olive-oil soap and lemon juice. The stomachs are then cut into pieces then sewn into small bags, filled with a mixture of rice, meat and sweet Arabic spices, then sewn shut. Arabic haggis, you could say. The intestines are stuffed with the same filling then sewn shut at regular intervals, just like sausages.
The heads and feet then have all the fur burned off, are washed and put in a huge pot along with the prepared stomachs and intestines, which is then filled with water and boiled for between five and six hours. This is done outside, on a gas burner attached to a bottle of gas as the pot is too big to be put on a homecooker. The two nearby goats whose turn is yet to come, grazed happily nearby and I regret not taking their picture too.
Once the meat is ready, it is taken out and goats’ yogurt is stirred through what is now goat stock, to make a thin soup that is served in bowls with the meal. All the bits of the animals are put on one large central platter, from which each person helps himself. I say himself, as this dish is served to a table of men while the women, who have been preparing this dish since the previous day continue to bring a seemingly endless supply of new body parts to the event.
Frankly, I found the whole experience of eating heads more interesting than anything else. I particularly liked the dark meat that runs down the outside of the jawbone, the tongue, the roof of the mouth and the eye-sockets (the eye-balls are one of the very few parts that are not eaten, though they are left to be popped out at the last minute). Once all the edible matter had been removed from each head, great pleasure was taken from placing the head on the ground, smashing it open with a nearby rock, and accessing the brains, the softest part of the whole creature. I could see why the brains are regarded as the best bit, though personally I found them a little too rich, like a strong pate with the unpleasant characteristic that fudge has of sticking to the inside of the mouth. The rest of the head consisted of non-descript pieces of meat, fat and cartilage and could only be referred to as ‘the bit between’ two others. The feet, I found to be very soft fat covered in rather thick skin, like thick ‘crackling’ that has been boiled rather than baked. The ears seemed rather pointless, being thin sheets of cartilage without flavour – a bit of salt here would have done the trick.
More enjoyable than any of the above however, was the occasion itself and the honour of being invited to a feast that is only taken once each year, and which was presented to me with obvious pride. This is a labour intensive and expensive meal to produce and is one that, like so much in Palestine, is centred on the family. As my host said as we sat eating outdoors within the heavily built-up Deisheh refugee camp, “all around us is civilisation, but this meal takes us back to our natural state.” There was a truth in what he said, but above all else I arrived as a curious guest and left as a satisfied and humbled friend.
