Beyond Belief (6 page)

My stepgrandmother soon found room on a pew. Mama bent down to greet and kiss the people she recognized from our yearly visits. At home, Mama was a busy suburban mother juggling work and nursing school, but here she was someone else entirely, more Iraqi, more Shia. From under her scarf and
abaya,
she spoke to us in Arabic as if English had not conquered her tongue as well as ours. “
Sallemi
,” she prodded us along to greet her friends with the traditional “
Assalmu Alaikum,
” followed by a kiss on each cheek.

Mama had relatives in the area that had arrived earlier. They now pulled their purses into their laps to make room for us. Then the Seyyid’s voice carried over the partition, at first didactic and then afflicted with the weight of the tale on his lips. Mama stopped her crying and urged me to pay attention. “If you listen,” she promised, “you’ll understand.”

I hated being told this. We had been making this journey for years now, but the only things I knew about the story of Imam Husayn were the things Mama had told me in English. I knew he and his family had been on their way to Kufa when the reigning caliph’s army had intercepted them. In one day, Yazid ibn Muawiyya’s men killed Imam Husayn’s valiant brother and handsome nephew, his thirsty six-month-old son, dozens of his followers—all this before beheading the imam himself and setting fire to the camp where the men’s sisters, wives, and daughters awaited their return.

Knowing this outline was not enough to help me decipher the narrative within the mournful dirge the Seyyid recited, the poignant details that made the women around me sob and slap their thighs. The only thing I recognized were the names that floated out of the Seyyid’s sermon like clear little bubbles, but I longed to understand more. I wanted to know what could be so sad it made people cry every time they heard it year after year. When Mama told me
parts of the story, I felt sad, but I never burst into tears. I didn’t know if it was something about how the story was told in Arabic or if it was something about the people listening to it. Did Iraqis cry easier? Was I too American to cry? Or maybe the tears were age related? Maybe only adults cried?

I studied the faces around me, hoping to find all the young people in the crowd dry-eyed. I’d almost confirmed my assumption when I spied two sisters in tightly wrapped headscarves huddled at their mother’s feet. They had tissues in their hands with their heads bent down. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to appear as if they were crying or if they actually were. I strained to get a better look and discovered that one of them had tear-stained cheeks. I was crestfallen. How come she understood when I didn’t?

My jealously, however, was fleeting. The Seyyid concluded his sermon, and I heard the rustling sound of the microphone changing hands. Soon another speaker would recite a series of call-and-response chants that our congregation would keep time to by beating on their chests. My thoughts wandered to the year before when a small group of women had attempted the
latmiya,
a lamentation ritual Mama said she had not seen since she’d left Iraq. That night, Mama had moved in circles, her hands flying up to her face in rhythm with the chant being recited. The faces of the women around her reddened from a combination of tears and slapping. Together their hands made the sound of a unified clap. When she motioned for me to join her, I shook my head. That circle belonged to the women who understood Arabic, the women who were real Iraqis. But as the evening wore on, I had regretted my decision to sit on the sidelines. I’d hoped she’d ask me to join her again, but she didn’t. Now I wondered what I would do if they assembled for the
latmiya
again.

As soon as the recitation started, Mama took my hand and brought me into the circle. I was relieved she did not ask, that I did not have to choose. My heart pounding, I watched her for a hint as to what I should do. When she started to move, I copied her, bending so that my hair spilled forward while slapping my forehead with both hands. The movement of my hair brought relief from the crowd’s heat, a small breeze on my sweaty neck. The muscles in my back warmed and loosened as we moved in circles around the room. Bend, slap, stand, and step.

On my third revolution around the room, something amazing happened. I understood. After years of attending services in an incomprehensible fog, one line opened up my world. The speaker called out, “
Abd wallah, Ya Zahra, ma ninsa Husayna
.” At first it was nothing more than a tight knot of language, but after the third or fourth time of repeating it, that knot unraveled into distinct, intelligible words, “I swear to God, O Zahra, we will not forget Husayn.”

Shia legend had it that Imam Husayn’s mother, Fatimaaz-Zahra, attended every
majlis,
or gathering, where the name of her martyred son was mentioned. These words were being spoken to a presence among us. Each time we repeated them, the cries of the group grew louder, and the women in the circle no longer stepped, but jumped, bringing their hands high up into the air and then pulling them right down on the top of their heads. I jumped with them, beating each side of my head with my hands, and before I knew it, I was crying with a mix of emotions. Relief to have understood, overwhelmed by the power of the words on my tongue. I was promising a mother that I would not forget the death of her son.

A realization surged through me. Many of these women had known the pain of Fatimaaz-Zahra firsthand. The Gulf War had just ended, and there wasn’t a woman next to me who hadn’t kissed
her father or brother good-bye without wondering when she’d see him again. For the first time, I understood the Shia adage “Every day is Ashura. Every land is Karbala.” Daily, the martyrdom of Imam Husayn played out in someone’s life, somewhere in the world. This was especially true in Iraq, a country whose modern history was marred by tragedy and tyranny. I thought about Manal, standing across the circle from me. At the height of the Iran-Iraq War, armed soldiers had stormed into her uncle’s home, accused them of being Iranian sympathizers, and deported her right along with them. She never saw her parents again.

This thought made me cry even more. Each time I brought my hands up to my face, I slapped myself a little harder. The tender skin on my face stung, but it was a good hurt. Just a small burn. A little reminder of how lucky I was to know only such inconsequential pain.

When the
latmiya
was over, the women fanned their
abayas
to cool down and moved about the room, exchanging hugs and kisses with the wish “May God accept your prayers.”

Mama came over to me, sweaty and out of breath. When she kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “I am proud of you,
hababa
,” a bud of warmth bloomed within me. I was a good girl.

Mama’s elderly aunt motioned us over to the pew where she sat. Leaning on her cane, she said, “When I see you with your daughters, I think of Zaynab and cry more.” Mama squeezed my hand. She was honored by this comparison to Imam Husayn’s sister, the hero of Karbala, the one who had condemned her captors for the injustice done to her brother in a fiery speech, the one who had held the first mourning assembly in his name.

The following day, we reconvened on the men’s side for a special ladies’ session. Stretched across the walls were black banners with Imam Husayn’s name painted in bold white Arabic lettering.
At the front of the room and just behind the chandelier in all its incongruent splendor was the Seyyid’s chair, raised on a platform and covered in black fabric. This space was not expansive by any means, but it felt ample and generous by contrast to the women’s side. The older women spread out along the pews, their bodies relaxed; children ran in every direction.

Right away I joined the circle of women, waiting for the recitation to start with their headscarves dropped to their necks, their
abayas
open so that they draped on either side of their bodies. Our speaker, an elderly women in a crinkled scarf, pulled toward herself the microphone positioned in front of the Seyyid’s chair. At the start of her reading, two women from the edge of the circle stepped into the center; depending on the speed of the chant, they either bent forward and brought their hands up to their faces or jumped from side to side, bringing their hands down on top of their heads. Sometimes they turned around and faced the women in the outer circle, stopping in front of each woman to make a guttural “huh, huh,” noise that acted as an invitation to match their fervor and energy. Although I was too afraid to go in the center of the circle, Mama wasn’t. She led the women in the outer circle until she got tired and had to retreat to its edges.

At times, I looked over at the other women, those standing outside of the circle and lightly beating their chests, those sitting on the pews and crying quietly. I wondered what kind of woman stayed on the sidelines. Within our own tradition, these lamentation rituals were surrounded by controversy, and I wondered if the women looking on were not as devout, or if they did not believe in the
latmiya,
if they thought the practice was too extreme. I wondered what it said about me that I was standing there. I thought about my teachers, my friends from school, my friends who were Sunni Muslims. What
would they think if they saw me standing here, beating myself? But as we moved in slow, deliberate circles about the room, I was surprised that something so mournful, something so cult-like in its outward appearance, could feel so beautiful to the insider. The women’s silky black
abayas
flowed with their every movement, making their bodies appear as if they were dripping in sadness. Their faces, red from tears and the marks their hands left on their cheeks and foreheads, spoke of things too powerful, too gray to explain. Yes, love and devotion to the imam had brought them to the edges of this circle, but their bodies, now given the permission to speak, had so much more to say.

In this circle, we were witnesses, people with the power to keep a tragedy alive for more than a millennia. The Shia may have been the historical losers, our desired successors never assuming power without it ending in bloodshed, but we were also the masters of memory, victorious in our ability to give relevance to our past. It struck me as something every atrocity deserved, a group of people who would honor their suffering for the ages.

When the session concluded an hour later, my back ached from the repetitive bending forward, and my tight muscles told me something of why not everyone participated. But at the same time, I felt a satisfaction that canceled out the hurt. I did not understand all the words that had been chanted around me, but I had participated in a tradition larger and grander than my teenage self.

My satisfaction was short-lived. Instead of kissing and hugging me as she had the night before, Mama took my chin in her hands and said, “What did you do your face?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your face,” she said, feeling gently under my eye.

“What about my face?” I asked.

“You gave yourself a black eye. You know you’re not really supposed to hit yourself?”

“Really?” I said, touching my hands to my cheekbones, trying to feel what Mama saw. But the only thing I felt was the sting of tears. I was afraid to say more. I was afraid I would cry for misunderstanding so much.

“You’re supposed to bring your hands up to your face but when you get there you just tap.”

I felt flush. I thought hurting yourself was the whole point.

Drawn by the commotion, a small group of women formed around me, each one of them offering a piece of advice as to how to perform the
latmiya.
I fought away tears until I picked up on something in the tone of their advice. It was pride. Mama stood next to me, explaining what had happened, and she had a pleased air about her. She shook her head with an almost imperceptible smile, as if to say, “Look what she’s done in the name of Imam Husayn.”

Watching Mama with the women around her, I realized the power of that little mark. It announced to the community that I had stood with Mama during the time of the
latmiya,
that I cared about my religion, and that I wanted to learn more. It proved I was different from the girls who had sat at the back of the room and whispered with their friends. I felt pure, good, obedient. Even though I didn’t recognize the girl that had been spinning in the center of the room moments before, I liked her. She belonged.

Baptizing the Annas

Caitlin Constantine