First Majlis
It was my first time attending a majlis. To have lived to the age of twenty-three without having gone to one felt a little strange when the existence of the Shia around me had never been a secret. My childhood best friend was Shia, I went to a university owned by a wealthy Shia family of Pakistan; and a number of my close friends during my bachelors were also Shia with whom I often had conversations around religion and sect. I couldn’t tell why I had never attended a majlis, if it was because my city had seen seemingly endless sectarian violence and hatred, or if it was by design or internalized other-ization. On the eighth of Muharram I pretended to go to work but, instead, went to my first ever majlis. I didn’t know what to expect, so I took along another friend who, like me, had never attended one before.
At 10am, we reached the house of a Shia friend of mine. Her door was open for anyone to enter. Her brother, sitting on a bench outside the house, gestured at us warmly to go in. My friend’s mother smiled and welcomed us. The majlis was about to start. Clad in black, everyone settled on the white chandni floor. The durood was recited aloud by the women in the room – “Allah hum sali ala Mohamadin waala Aal e Muhammad.” I was instantly taken back to what I, too, recite in my daily prayers. Aal-e-Muhammad – descendants of the Prophet – stayed with me.
Women from the neighbourhood continued to pour in while someone recited a marsiya on the mic and others followed along. A woman sitting at the entrance of the room wailed loudly as the recitation continued. Gradually, the room became more and more packed. The zakira, who sat on a chair behind a mic, asked everyone to sit closer to each other to make room for the ones just joining in. So we squeezed and nestled against one another. The zakira told the assembly that what she was about to narrate was something she couldn’t even bear to utter. Then she related the events of the tents and the battlefield when Hazrat Ghazi Abbas went to fetch water from the river. She spoke and cried simultaneously, her words slowly growing incomprehensible. Women around me covered their faces with their dupattas, slapped their heads, beat their chests, and wailed helplessly in agony at what the zakira was saying. I glanced at my friend who had shut her eyes.
We had found ourselves in an auditory experience that we had not expected. Coming from households where we were told that the souls of the deceased feel pain at the sound of our wailing, the sounds of the room we were now in were a shock to our systems. As we were trying to adjust to our surroundings and focus on what was being said in a space full of crying women, suddenly everyone stood up. Clueless, the two of us got onto our feet as well. I pulled my friend close as women around us were overwhelmed with emotion. Louder cries came from the other end of the room – a flag with a silver palm-like structure at its end was being brought in. The alam, symbolic flag of Ghazi Abbas. Women touched and kissed it. And then at once a noha was being recited in unison. The women extended their arms to full length and brought them back in full force. The air in the room throbbed as the women pounded their chests. One hand at a time on the stanzas and both hands at the same time on the chorus. All synchronized to every beat to three nohay. I cupped my hands and hung them low. My head lowered too. I couldn’t get a glimpse of my friend, I couldn’t tell how she felt. Once that last noha was recited, everyone in the room turned their faces in three different directions while reciting something we did not know. Confused, we did the same. And then suddenly, it was all over. Women wiped their tears, greeted each other, and began to disperse. They made small talk as they stood in line to collect their tabbaruk and left for the next majlis in the neighbourhood.
I saw our host friend coming towards us, smiling. We went to her room and she asked us half-jokingly, half-seriously if we were OK. The next thing I knew, chai and biscuits were being brought in and everyday conversations rolled on our tongues. Lying on her bed casually, we asked each other how our families were doing, and talked about our jobs and life after graduation. All the while I wondered if there were an extreme emotion-changing-switch in the room that I did not know of. My host friend asked us about our experience again, but we were not able to formulate an answer yet. We quickly finished our tea and found a chance to take our leave.
The next two days I was off from work on account of the 9th and 10th of Muharram, which gave me more time to think about my experience. A deep sense of strangeness and almost alienation took over me as I battled questions about faith and friendship. My mind raced between the concepts of religion-cultures-traditions and love-devotion-worship. Questions I am still searching answers for.
I think about Max Muller’s words: He who knows one (religion/faith), knows none. I have been to multiple majalis now, and continued to have conversations with my Shia and Sunni friends alike. It has helped me understand where they are coming from in their faith and where I stand in mine.
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– Saniyah Salman lives in Karachi, Pakistan. She works at a grassroots NGO dedicated to building story-reading habits in children of local communities and has co-authored a children’s story book on gender roles in Pakistan. She also curates a writer’s group called ‘Writing for Memory’, aimed toward creating historical memory about the ongoing genocide in Gaza through literature. From 2023-2024, she served as the Editor-in-Chief of Tezhib, an undergraduate research journal. With an interest in Urdu literature, she has been featured in multiple issues of the student-run Arzu Anthology (Issues V and VII) as well as PridePress Magazine. She has also served as an Associate Editor for Urdu in Arzu Anthology VI and is currently an Editorial Intern at Lakeer. She shares her writings and thoughts on her Instagram account, @deedawer.
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