The goat who needed a gate pass

Eid mubarak, terms and conditions apply Urban Bystander. The goat was ready for sacrifice. Islamabad was not ready for the goat. Before entering the approved market, it required a gate pass, a fee slip, a health clearance and the blessings of the Ministry of Approved Mercy, which had no building but every citizen knew its counter. In this city, sacrifice does not begin with the animal. It begins with the receipt. It was the Year of the Approved Sacrifice, when the salaried man performs his annual arithmetic and discovers, with the punctuality of grief, that devotion has once again outrun salary. In a market of goats, tarpaulins, dust and bargaining, 42 degrees had the civic honesty of 52. Men, animals and citizens waited in the same sun. Only the animals, it turned out, had paperwork. Into this devout inconvenience went Hussain, the Bystander’s nephew, notebook in hand and innocence still dangerously operational. The adults were discussing prices, heat, traffic and office calls, which is how adults avoid decisions. Hussain acted. He left a note on the table, “Gone for special assignment. Don’t worry.” His mission was a goat with kind eyes, medium size, fluffy if possible, and unwilling to fight children. The goat stood at the entrance to a sanctioned market, one of six the Authority had auctioned for Rs349.5 million, with the quiet pride of an institution that found devotion a renewable resource. “What did the goat do wrong?” Hussain asked. “It tried to enter Islamabad without regularisation,” said the man at the barrier. Hussain wrote it down. Rule 1: No receipt, no goat. At the barrier sat Constable Tufail, minor priest of paperwork, guarding the border between faith and municipal revenue. Rs4,000 for a large animal. Rs3,000 for small. Nothing for a camel, which the schedule had not anticipated, the way this city never anticipates the largest thing standing directly in front of it. A Cashless System had been announced. Kiosks had been promised. They were in the pre