“It’s like fireworks,” my friend Leila says, trying for a sensual appeal. She has invited me to watch this year’s kheymeh burning at the Tehran grand bazaar. Embarrassingly, I don’t know what a kheymeh is or why it is being set on fire, but I resolve to go because today - 14 November - is Ashura, the Day of Mourning.

I haven’t mastered the play-by-play but can at least recount the basics: Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Shia Islam’s tragic hero Imam Hussein, who died in battle after refusing to submit to the rule of Umayyad caliph Yazid the first. The conflict came to a sanguinary end in the holy city of Karbala, when Hussein was beheaded by one of Yazid’s commanders, Shemr.



I take a bus en route to the metro, but within minutes we come to a standstill. We’ve run up against a mourning procession, marching toward us in an officially bus-only lane. Men, young and old, all dressed in shades of black, simulate self-flagellation with light-weight chain pom-poms to the thump of a bass drum and the crackle of a snare. A chanter trailing the group unloads his heart into a microphone wired to a mobile loudspeaker. At the fore of the march, several men bear the immense weight of an ornate apparatus called an alam on their shoulders.

“This isn’t mourning — this is a nuisance,” says the driver, reboarding the bus after a quick smoke. The man next to me mumbles under his breath; the woman behind me says she doesn’t see any “upstanding people” in the procession. The bus, which has picked up its passengers in less-pious northern Tehran, is hostile. But there is something compelling about the spectacle of this mourning parade — the coordinated chain swings that undo the silence of a wintry Tehran afternoon, in line with the rhythm of a Yamaha bass drum that shatters it. It beats getting stuck behind the ill-conceived Niayesh intersection a bit farther down that holds up Tehrani straphangers by the thousands every day.

Ashura is the tenth day of Muharram, a month of public mourning for Shiites. Black, green, and red (but mainly black) banners festoon Tehran’s boulevards, mosques, and schools. The processions of mourning chants and self-flagellation that course through the streets express solidarity with Imam Hussein and his companions (in 1994, a fatwa was issued in Iran to ban any form of self-flagellation that inflicts serious bodily harm — hence the lack of bloodletting...for the most part). IRIB, the state television network, broadcasts group mourning sessions around the clock. School bells unleash a flood of students decked out in black to mark the occasion — shirts, shoes, pants, and socks. Bright colors are rarely seen in the streets.

But as I depart the bus, take a shared cab, and head into the metro, which is free today, I see a man with pink trousers. No one objects. He doesn’t even attract stares. This is clearly not your granddad’s Islamic republic.

The kheymeh burning has attracted so many visitors that the station adjacent to the bazaar is too crowded for us to get off. The conductor lets us out at the next stop. I exit the station and begin to follow a slow-moving mass on Khayam Street. I walk and walk, until I see it, an enormous conical tent. I recall an earlier conversation with Leila. It’s the kheymeh.

By the time I reach the metro stop we skipped on Khordad Street, where the kheymeh is situated, I can appreciate the train conductor’s wisdom. The crowd is impenetrable. I’m on the phone with Leila again, but she tells me to find a good vantage point. The kheymeh will be set alight any minute now. I nestle in between several families whose children are more colorful than their parents. My camera is but one in a sea of phones, tablets, digital cameras, and SLRs set to record the occasion.

Costumed men wielding torches circle the kheymeh. Above, an IRIB cameraman and police officers stand perched along the edge of a building overlooking the scene. Rows of outstretched hands ready portable electronics. One of the torch-wielders approaches the tent, from whose peak a red flag flies. At first, a bit of smoke, and then the entire tent, as if soaked in gasoline, is enveloped in flames, producing a rapidly pluming black cloud that jolts the audience backward. The IRIB man is unfazed, zeroed in on his viewfinder.

As soon as the kheymeh is consumed, the crowd disbands. I meet up with Leila and her friend Saeed, who I learn is to serve as my personal historian today. Leila tells me to be mindful of laughing, but few spectators, if any, seem to mind when we share a chuckle. Despite the gravity of the day’s events, this was not a scene of elders scolding deviant youth, nor one of intimidation – indeed, there is something undeniably festive about the proceedings. They seem to me more like a national parade than anything else and the kheymeh burning, with a crowd more eager to record and admire than mourn, struck me as concert-like.

Besides, people are here with their families. Toddlers dressed in robes and keffiyahs in the image of Hussein’s martyred youngest son, Ali Asghar, are cradled in their parents’ arms. Those old enough to walk flaunt even more elaborate costumes. Servings of juice from concentrate are distributed in an untold number of plastic cups. Volunteers prepare nazri, a blessed offering in the name of Imam Hussein, or, as Leila’s secular terminology would have it, “free food.” Thus far during the month of Muharram, I’ve had rice with lentil stew, rice with spinach stew, and on a special occasion in ritzy northern Tehran, kebab and rice. Today, it’s a hot potato accompanied by a piece of sangak bread. People were quick to make sandwiches.

In the depths of the bazaar, we approach a group of men gathered around a storyteller. His words have brought his audience to tears. Saeed tells me the speaker is called a maddah. We move in closer as he recounts the last minutes of Imam Hussein’s life.

“Several of these ignoble men — five or six of them — went into the depths of the killing site to cut off his head, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it,” he says. “Imam Hussein just looked at them. They just couldn’t bring themselves to do it.”

Shemr stepped forward, “grabbed his dagger, and said, ‘Leave this to me.’ He pounced on [Hussein’s] chest and said, “Do you know who I am?!” The maddah’s voice crescendos. The wailing climaxes. Tears flow freely from the people surrounding us. Saeed describes it to me as a form of catharsis. Minutes later, he too is weeping beside me. I try not to look. I don’t want to make him feel uncomfortable.

The wailing grows so loud that the maddah is barely audible, so I cannot hear the story’s end, but from the response I take it that Hussein has just been killed. The maddah then transitions into what’s called roz-e khani — singing in agony at the tragedy that befell the Imam. He mentions the burning of the kheymeh. He too is crying.

In line with the maddah’s chants, a group soon separates from the crowd; those in the group begin to strike their heads with the palms of their hands —this, Saeed explains, is shoor gereftan, “getting impassioned.”

Leila laughs. “Don’t laugh,” implores Saeed, in the most unadmonishing tone. “Can I go to the tekyeh for a sec? Is that okay?” he asks, referring to an enclosed space where the chanters are headed to mourn (and where, in the morning, a passion play reenacting the events that led to Imam Hussein’s death was held).

We nod in assent. Leila turns to me. “He’s really devout,” she says. “He cried his heart out there. Did you see him?”

“Anyway, if they wouldn’t have killed him, he would have died by now,” Leila says of Imam Hussein. The story is obviously not as important to her as it is to Saeed.

We make our way out of the labyrinth that is the bazaar where Leila, now out in the open, feels comfortable expressing her opinion. She says she finds the tradition ridiculous.

“It’s a completely political thing,” she says. “Why is it that instead of Hussein, Yazid became the caliph?” asks Leila. “It’s as if we mourn for thousands of years because Mousavi and Karroubi didn’t become president [in the disputed 2009 election]. It’s as if [the supreme leader] kills Mousavi and Karroubi and then we mourn their death for thousands of years.”

Religiously, Leila and Saeed are polar opposites, I realize.

Still, when Saeed rejoins us after a brief round at the tekyeh, Leila greets him with a phrase of well-wishing to those who are performing their religious duties. “Ghabul bashe,” she says.

On the metro ride back to Leila’s place, Saeed fills me in on the gaps in Imam Hussein’s epic. Leila sits patiently, occasionally translating into English words and concepts I do not understand. I know, of course, that she believes in none of this. Saeed starts with caliph Muawiya’s death, and Yazid’s ascension, which sets into motion the historic struggle for political succession that would finalize the split between Sunnis and Shiites. For Yazid, Saeed reserves the most unforgiving language: the Umayyad caliph is “a big-time sinner,” “an alcoholic,” and lastly, “a womanizer.”

After Yazid’s forces killed Imam Hussein, I learn, they plundered and set fire to his kheymehs, forcing out the women and children inside. The “fireworks” I saw earlier in the day suddenly gain a new emotional weight.

As I busy myself with something, I see in my peripheral vision what looks like Leila briefly resting her head on Saeed’s shoulder.

Kheymeh burning aside, Leila finds Ashura and other religious ceremonies absurd. A few weeks ago, the morality police arrested her again for wearing a manteau that was not to their liking. They confiscated it and took mugshots that she posed for smilingly. Leila does not like the Islamic republic, but voted for Rouhani to see what would happen. She proudly lets her streaked bangs hang out from beneath her headscarf. She admits she “didn’t mind Islam” during the Khatami era.

For Saeed, Ashura is a solemn event. He kindly pleads throughout the day that we not laugh. He weeps uncontrollably at the story of Imam Hussein’s martyrdom. He extends his prayers to half an hour while Leila takes a nap on her couch. He believes in reforming the Islamic republic and spends part of the day lovingly narrating to me Imam Hussein’s family history. He’s curious to know my relationship with the Quran. He smokes Kent Ultras, and shakes hands with Leila’s friend, Maryam.

They are miles away from the bazaar, in a middle-class apartment complex, from vastly different backgrounds, yet both stuffed on potato salad, instant-coffee, small Iranian pickles, “digestive” cookies, and a 1.5-liter bottle of Coke.

Leila and Saeed are both independent filmmakers, living in the very same Tehran. They appear to be good friends.

Names have been changed.

This story initially ran without a byline



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