The (big, fat) Turkey Has Landed (in Algiers)

I'm in the back seat heading downtown while Nadir (interpreter) is in the front seat discussing with the driver details about the turkey. Jim and Shari are having Thanksgiving at their place and have given the driver the task of getting a turkey.
Jim said he wanted a big one ("and dead and plucked--you have to be specific here"), so the driver is explaining to Nadir that he got a sort of big one, and thinks it should be enough.

Nadir turns to me: "It's 20 kilos. Do you think that will be okay?"

20 kilos, 20 kilos. Sounds like a lot. I start to calculate. Let's see, 1 kilo is slightly more than 2 pounds, so that's.... that's....

..."What?!?!?! You're buying a 45 POUND turkey? Is that even possible?"

Yea, sure, I hear from both in the front seat. No sweat.

"Forty five pounds. Forty. Five. Pounds. In one turkey?"

Yes, this is nothing, Patricia. We eat this all the time. You know, especially after Ramadan when we are very hungry from fasting.

I ask Nadir if we are talking about the same animal.
"Are you sure this isn't an emu?
Or an ostrich?
Or a sheep? " I say.

Nadir starts to laugh while I get on the phone to my sister in England.

"Hi Joellyn. It's me. Have you ever heard of a 45 pound turkey?"
While Jo is huh-ing and what-ing, and expanding her brain to fit the cartoonish idea of a turkey the weight of her 9-year-old kid, I lose the connection.
Having stunned England, I call Jim.

"Hey Jim, it's me. Nadir and the driver are talking about the turkey. They are saying it's 45 pounds."
Jim yelps "WHAT?!?!?!" so loudly they can hear it in the front seat.

While Jim and I discuss the possibility of cutting the turkey in half so that we'll have half a bird at 22 pounds, the driver jokes that Jim could put the turkey in the washing machine and shrink it.

In the front seat, they start miming about shoving an obese bird into a small oven, while Jim and I ponder the mechanics of how one would go about stuffing half a turkey.

Shari, meanwhile, remains unaware of the giant, jurassic beast which is about to enter her kitchen. I imagine it arriving on a Harley, leathered and tattooed all around, with a marlboro hanging out of it's giant beak.

We want to save Shari from this horror.

"Nadir, tell the driver that we don't want a big bird, we only want a small one. Something around 10-12 kilos."
The driver is skeptical that he can get one that small.

He calls a few hours later and says he can get a 10-kilo bird (about 22 pounds), but that it'll have to be delivered in the morning, as it is still unaware of the fate that awaits it, and the duty will not be performed until this evening. Plus, the farmer is in the countryside, and it takes awhile to get it into Algiers.
But this won't do because of the timing (needs to go in the oven pre-dawn).

So it just may be, that when we sit down to our Thanksgiving feast, the silence of thanks will be shattered by the sound of the table cracking with the strain of the heavyweight centerpiece.