The first time I tried to go vegetarian I was eight. We were living in Albury, in a modern brick house that my father had built with the help of a handful of other men. The ground under the foundations had been our playground for months, as the house slowly went up around us.
Now the novelty had worn off, and the house was truly a home. We prayed each evening in the front lounge, and sat down for dinner together in the informal dining room, each of us four children trying to beat the others to the prized dining position – in between Mum and Dad.
But tonight, dinner had taken on a newly sinister quality. That day, my father and brother had driven out to a nearby farm and returned with three chickens. I was delighted at our new clucky friends, their sleek feathers soft as silk. But their eyes were wild as each was pulled out of their carrier and into the daylight.
My excitement quickly turned to shock as Mum laid out newspaper and brought out the big knives, and Dad began the process of slaughtering each bird in turn, speaking the prayers and following the process that sanctify meat as halal. I watched the throat of each bird being cut, and its blood falling like a fountain to the dry, dusty ground of our backyard. I was aghast. When we sat down to dinner that night, I stared at my empty plate, arms crossed. ‘I can’t eat it,’ I told my mother.
‘Dad shouldn’t have killed them.’
‘How do you think we get all of our meat?’ Mum said impatiently. ‘If Dad doesn’t kill them, a butcher does. Allah made animals for us to eat – don’t be silly.’
Rather than comforting me, Mum’s pragmatism sent me into a spiral of guilt. I thought about every chicken drumstick and lamb curry I had ever enjoyed, and about the chicken or lamb that died for my meal. I imagine my reaction looked a little like Lisa Simpson’s wild-eyed realisation about the origins of meat in the famous episode of The Simpsons (the same episode that sparked years of me being tormented by the ‘You Don’t Make Friends with Salad’ song, led by my brother).
Zoya Patel, aged 6, with her father. Source: Supplied
For one night and part of the next day, I refrained from eating meat, not wanting to take part in the cruelty any longer. But the next evening Mum put a platter of kebabs on the table, and I slowly reached for them, enticed by the smell of the spicy marinade and the juicy sounds of my siblings tucking in. I mean, a growing child needs protein, right?
This was just the opening salvo of a battle I would fight with myself for the next seven years, until I eventually went vegetarian for good at the age of 15.
My tipping point into a vegetarianism that stuck occurred thanks to the internet. I spent most of my teen years feeling helpless and frustrated about the world’s treatment of animals. By the time I turned 14, I was printing petition sheets from World Animal Protection on a range of topics, from banning bear bile farming in China to ending bullfighting in Spain, and hovered outside the main doors of my high school every morning, clipboard in hand, seeking signatures.
My parents did what had worked in the past – they accepted my new identity with only mild objections, and proceeded to starve me out. Mum said she was happy to accommodate me in general, but if I wanted vegetarian food, I could make it myself. She was already feeding six people every night, hard enough without taking special requests. I lasted a few weeks on cheese and tomato sandwiches, before I started feeling light- headed at school, and would lie on the couch each afternoon feeling weak and faint. Mum caved immediately, and for the next six years she kept me supplied in vegetable stir-fry, vegetarian lasagne and curries – so many delicious curries.
"By the time I turned fourteen, I was printing petition sheets from World Animal Protection". Zoya Patel, aged 11, in Gujurat, India in 2000. Source: Supplied
It was harder for me to maintain my rage and vegetarianism on my second trip to India, at sixteen, when we visited relatives for meals, crowding into their small houses. We would sit down on the floor for a meal, and bowl after bowl of curries and condiments would be brought out. When I didn’t take any meat, my aunt looked at my mother in concern. ‘Why isn’t she eating? Is there something wrong?’
Mum glanced at my plate containing only vegetable curries and shrugged awkwardly. ‘She eats like a bird,’ she said, and changed the subject.
Afterwards, I raised my confusion with Mum. ‘I don’t get why they were so interested in what I was eating,’ I said. ‘Should I have tried to take more? I didn’t want to be greedy.’
‘I know you really care about being vegetarian,’ Mum said, ‘but it’s different over here. They probably only eat meat a few times a year, when they can afford it. They bought that meat in honour of our visit, and it was hard for them to understand why you wouldn’t eat it when it was such a sacrifice for them.’ I realised then that at these dinners our relatives never took meat themselves – they encouraged us to eat it, but abstained themselves so there would be enough for their guests. The shame this awakened in me – at the thought of their selflessness, and their poverty, and their confusion as to why I didn’t enjoy the result of their labour – meant that for the rest of the trip, I ate what was given to me, choking down meat with a smile.
Writer Zoya Patel (Photo: Linda Macpherson) Source: Linda Macpherson
As I’ve said, there is no hierarchy of suffering or injustice, but to know that I have the ability to make ethical choices with no adverse consequence to my own wellbeing means that I can’t justify turning a blind eye to animal cruelty in Australia. I can make exceptions in the face of such extreme inequality in India, but if anything, this only fuels my determination to advocate for animal welfare when I am back on Australian soil.
This is an edited extract from No Country Woman by Zoya Patel published by Hachette Australia, RRP $32.99.
