Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village (38 page)

she felt, the events silenced her. She never mentioned the veil

to me again.

We set out that evening ostensibly to buy her two daughters

new shoes for school, for the term began just after the

ceremonies ended. I knew perfectly well that we were going to

see the taaziyas and so did the girls, but a good woman Najat’s

age does not go wandering outside her house at night even

during religious festivals unless she has a cast-iron excuse for

her husband, should he object, and for her neighbors, should

they feel like gossiping.

I was told later that there were nearly a million people in

Karbala that night—Karbala, which normally has a population

of 30,000. I believe it. Before we even left Najat’s house we

could hear the muted roar of the crowds, and by the time we

reached the main street leading to the imam the noise was

deafening.

“Walk near the shops,” shouted Najat, “or we’ll never make

it. Don’t lose sight of me.”

It was almost impossible to move at all unless we let the

crowd carry us along, but Najat was determined. Single file,

holding onto the little girls, we plunged into the dense mass of

people and pushed our way through until we could walk

beside the shuttered shop fronts. Occasionally we fanned out

to dodge the counter of an open kiosk or avoid stepping on

someone lying prone on a mat. But most of the mats were

rolled up that evening. This was the climactic night of the

spectacle of the taaziyas; no one who was able to walk upright

was asleep.

“Mama, we can’t see anything,” complained one of the little

girls.

“Can’t see,” whimpered her younger sister.

They were quite right.

We could hear the hoarse cries of the taaziya processions,

but a mass of spectators ten and twenty deep blocked our view

completely except for occasional glimpses of flags and

smoking torches held high.

“Never mind, we’ll go up to the mosque and watch the

taaziyas coming out,” promised their mother. “That will be

much better.”

So we resumed our struggle forward against the stream of

traffic. Holding tight to the hand of Najat’s daughter, I kept

my eyes fixed on the resplendent mosque at the end of the

street and surrendered to the general air of excitement and

tension that I felt in Najat, in her daughters, and in the

hundreds of thousands of people who pressed around me.

Night had heightened the holy day sounds and sights of

Karbala. The radio loudspeakers blared, turned up full volume

to compete with the cries of the taaziyas and the roar of the

crowds. Neon blazed white and pink and gold all along the

street, casting a weird glow on the flags and banners; on the

faces turned upward—white, black and brown; picking out the

jumble of costumes worn by the group of believers: the black-

and-white kaffiyehs of the southern Iraqi tribes, green turbans

of Sayids, white coats of Pakistanis, navy-blue and wine-red

abayahs of Persian women. Garlands of electric lights

festooned the slender minarets of the mosque, and the broad

golden dome, illuminated by thousands of bulbs, shone like a

sun set in the black night sky. There was no wind, but the

crowd moved ceaselessly back and forth, while the colored

flags and banners hung limp above in the artificially bright air.

We had almost reached the imam when Sitt Najat motioned

me into a shoe store. There were no customers, but the

proprietor, a distant relation of Najat’s husband, had opened

his shop so he might watch the processions. He expressed

amazement at the size of the crowds; usually, he said, he had a

very good view of the parades, but tonight he had to stand on

a chair or on his counter to see over the people’s heads.

I was introduced, murmured traditional greetings, and the

shoe-store proprietor asked Najat, to my everlasting delight, if

I was a Persian pilgrim visiting the family.

Sitt Najat smiled and said that I was an American.

The proprietor’s eyes widened in surprise. He recovered

enough, however, to say to me, in careful English, “I see you

wear the beautiful mantle of my countrywomen. Is it not a

graceful robe, the abayah?”

I replied that I had found it so, and useful as well; this gave

him the opening for a sad little speech, phrased in the same

stilted English.

“If even a foreigner, such as yourself,” he said, “finds the

abayah beautiful, why then do our young women begin to

despise it so? I have heard from reliable persons that in

Baghdad young girls now walk about without the abayah,

exposing themselves on the streets to men they do not even

know. Is this true?”

I said yes.

“And they laugh at the abayah and call it ugly,” he added,

shaking his head.

Then, remembering his manners, he ordered Coca-Cola for

us to drink while the girls tried on shoes.

When we left, he took my hand gravely, with a mournful

“what is the world coming to?” sigh, and pointed out a place

near his shop where we might stand on a raised step to get a

good view of the taaziyas.

We thanked him and inched our way into the spot he had

indicated. He was right; there were two high steps leading to

the closed door of a shop, and from the top one we could just

see over the crowd. Najat and I took turns lifting the children.

Each taaziya group performed the prescribed ceremony

before the tomb of the martyr and then marched out of the

main entrance of the mosque to proceed down the street,

repeating the ritual, in religious ecstasy, before the thousands

of pilgrims. By the time we finally had settled ourselves, one

taaziya had just passed down the street. We could hear the

chant of the group next in line, echoing and re-echoing within

the great courtyard around the tomb. Then the new group

emerged; a green banner and a black, lit by flickering torches

held high, were borne forward by the hands of very old men

and boys who were not of the age to perform the ritual of

flagellation. Then a score of young men, bare to the waist,

wearing only black or white trousers and white head cloths,

surged out, marching in strict rows of fours. I do not know

what I had expected, from the torches and the noises and the

sounds of the chant and chains, from the small procession I

had seen in El Nahra. An orgy? An exhibition of

sensationalism? Whatever I had expected, this was completely

different, different in scope and quality from the taaziya I had

seen in El Nahra.

The torches and weirdly lit banners, the bunch of black

chains in the right hand of every man, the black garments, the

glazed and exhausted eyes of the performers, and their

drenched, sweating bodies signified a religious experience

with which I was totally unfamiliar. Intense yet deliberate, the

rhythm of the slow, liturgical chant never varied, its tempo

ruled by the downward sweep of the chains, by the long,

sustained cries of the leaders, by the thud of metal on flesh. In

ancient and dignified figures, these young men were spelling

out once more for a million pilgrims the renunciation, the

humility and penitence which lie at the heart of Shiite Islam.

Mourning for the lost martyr was exalted into a great drama of

sorrow and became the individual sorrow of every pilgrim.

“Ohhhhh—Hussein, most great, most honored, we grieve

for thee,” called the leader, walking backward, step after

measured step down the cleared aisle of the street. At this

signal the chains were swung like incense burners, across the

body, out to the side; a silent half beat, marked by the thump

of bare feet marching in unison, passed before the score of

chains swung back to thud on the bared shoulders.

“Yaaaa—Hussein,” responded the young men.

“Ohhhhh—Hussein, most betrayed, we mourn for thee,”

cried the leader, shaking the sweat out of his eyes. Click went

the chains across the body, out, and then the unbearable silent

half beat. The crowd held its breath, letting it out in a

concerted sigh as the chains struck the bare shoulders.

“Yaaaa—Hussein,” answered the young men. Their

shoulders were bruised blue from the ritual beatings, the

kerchiefs around their heads blotched from perspiration. Still

they kept up the sustained note, the measured beat, and the

chains swung again like censers. The chains thudded and the

chant swelled higher from a score of throats, from a hundred,

as the taaziyas awaiting their turn inside the mosque were

heard in the distance, in the silent half beats of the continuing

ritual.

“Ohhhhhhh—Hussein, our beloved martyr, we grieve for

thee,” cried the leader.

Tears streamed down the faces of sobbing men standing

near me, and the piercing wailing cries of the women spoke of

loss and pain and grief and lamentation.

The taaziya procession passed us, chanting and marching,

striking their shoulders. The cry of the leader receded into the

distance, but already another group was poised at the mosque

entrance, eager to take part in the yearly ceremony. Another

black banner and a green; gold tassels, flaring torches, a bare-

chested leader; the group fanned out into a circle, varying the

figures and beats accordingly. A careful circle, they moved

together down the street, swinging their chains, chanting in

sadness and yet in exultation.

Now a third group waited impatiently for the circle to pass

out of earshot. The men, their tempers taut from the heat and

the heightened emotions of their ritual exertions inside the

shrine, were clamoring to start. Their leader and the mullah at

the entrance tried to hold them back, but in a total break with

the dignity and restraint of their mission they pushed forward,

almost on top of the circle of men who chanted and swung the

chains in front of them. A green banner toppled and fell,

breaking the thin line between frenzy and disciplined ritual.

Men from rival groups tussled briefly and bitterly. The crowd

fell back, gasping at this breach of conduct, and the police

intervened. The leader of the unruly group pushed his fellow

villagers back into line and began desperately to mark the

slow, strong beat.

“Ohhhhhh Hussein, oh betrayed one!” he cried. The men

shuffled into place and the chains clicked, almost in unison

again. Farther down the street the green banner was raised

once more and the perfect figures, the circle and the square,

reasserted themselves.

But now four or five taaziyas were backed up at the

entrance to the shrine, their appearance delayed by the melee.

The leaders had started the litany already, apparently to keep

the groups in line, and they could be heard alternately

chanting and shouting in strange cacophony.

“At the next break we must cross the street, or we’ll be here

all night,” Sitt Najat shouted in my ear.

She took my hand, and I took the hand of her daughters. We

started forward and had pushed ourselves nearly to the front

edge of the crowd at the door of the shrine when we were

forced backward again by the banners and torches of a new

group. I heard an oath behind me and turned to see angry faces

thrust next to mine, a woman gesturing in my face and a man

with his arm raised to strike me. I looked down, to discover in

horror that I was standing on someone’s tiny prayer rug! How

anyone came to be praying in that crowd I will never know,

but I had stepped on the woman’s hands with my heavy shoes

and had almost stepped on the disc of clay used by Shiites to

rest their foreheads while bowing in prayer.

At the shouting and angry words, people stood back and

turned around to look. I opened my mouth to apologize, but

Sitt Najat had already taken my hand again and was pulling

me away. I felt myself propelled through protesting crowds

that nudged and prodded and elbowed me as I was dragged

forcibly along; I felt the daughter’s hand slip from mine, but I

was powerless to turn and find her again.

“Hold on!” shouted Najat, covering her face with her

abayah and motioning to me to do likewise. I held my abayah

in front of my face with one hand, and felt the other nearly

being pulled out of its socket as Sitt Najat, now in obvious

panic, jerked me through the crowd, away from the incident

and the growing number of shouting people who stood at the

door of the shrine.

We might have spent only a quarter of an hour pushing our

way through that crowd, we might have been much longer, but

I was ready to drop when we reached a side street and were

suddenly lost in an unlighted alley. Let us stop, I thought

silently, oh, let us stop, but Najat did not pause. She pulled me

on and on, and I stumbled through the dark, tripping over

unknown objects and stepping into puddles, my foot squishing

in my shoe as I ran. Najat continued to drag me on.

Finally she slowed down, and I asked her where the

children were.