Majlis
You are five.
You are in a black dress with lace that your mom sewed,
sitting cross-legged on the farsh-e-aza1, potato chips in hand.
You lean into your mother in her black shalwar kameez
as she listens to the mulana speak in Urdu.
But the words fly over you like a distant sound.
You are six.
You’re not allowed to watch any cartoons,
or wear pink or red, or earrings
for two months and eight days.
So when your class goes to watch Space Jam
you pretend to sleep the whole time.
Later, at the majlis2, you watch
women break into sobs, and hear men wail
from behind the partition.
You look down
at the carpet quietly
until the nohay3 begin.
Later still, you run outside
because you love getting tabarruk.
You are seven.
At the center a kind teenager explains
that Bibi Sakina4 was a little girl just like you,
and she was separated from her parents,
and she and all the other little children
didn’t have any food or water5.
You imagine what she must have felt.
In line for tabarruk, the smells of
haleem, fresh-cut ginger and chaat masala waft over to you.
A tall alam stands a few feet away
and you tiptoe over to touch it quickly
and scoot back in line beside
your mother and your sister.
You are twelve.
Your father tells you about Hazrat Qasim6
trampled by the hooves of stampeding horses.
Tears well up in your eyes, and do so again
at the majlis that evening, even though
you still don’t understand most of the mulana’s words,
because you imagine Qasim to be as big as a boy in your class.
You are fifteen.
It’s Muharram again, you have three exams this week,
one on Ashura7.
You have to ask the teacher for an excused absence
for a religious observance that she’s never heard of
and that none of the other Muslim kids request.
You bring your notes to the majlis every night
but pack them away once the masaib8 start.
You fall asleep on the car ride home
to the sound of Sachay Bhai’s voice
crooning about a letter written by Sughra.9
You are eighteen.
You are in a college dorm and the imambara
your family attends is multiple train rides away
and you have midterms. You feel guilty.
On your earphones, on the fourth floor of the library, you listen to nohay
as you try to memorize biological reactions
but your heart’s not in it.
You are nineteen.
You are in Karachi with your family.
Some nights, you go to a drive-in majlis
and listen in on a loudspeaker.
On the evening of the ninth10
you go from house to house,
imambara to imambara11,
the sweet words of nohay and prayers
flowing over you like perfume.
The next morning there is a bomb blast
killing scores of worshippers just like you,
just a few feet away from where you were.
You wonder if someone you stood beside
under the shadow of a towering alam with the name of Abbas12
inscribed in loving stitches of glittering gold on black only hours ago,
is now dead.
The next morning your mamus all go to janaza prayers
for the shaheed, a community of thousands undeterred, crying,
“Oh Hussain, we are with you. We will always be with you.”
You are changed forever.
You are twenty.
Your youngest mamu is no longer on this earth.
The masaib of Hazrat Ali Akbar13
and Hazrat Abbas break you.
The nohay break you.
Teri maa ko batoun mein kaisay?
Tera lasha utaaoun main kaisay?
You are twenty-one.
You are still grieving.
This makes your Muslim friend uncomfortable.
“You Shias prolong grief,” she says.
“What is even the point of your majlis?”
You never speak to her again,
but hold on to her question.
You are twenty-six.
You are married to the guy who established
the first ever Muharram program,
a space that has changed people’s lives,
at a university in Manhattan.
But now you both live in Philly
so you both commute to New York
getting home at 2 in the morning, for ten days.
This Muharram is the first time
your faith feels like your own.
You are thirty.
Your son is born on the eve of the 1st of Muharram.
You name him after the grandson of Mohammad
who’d held him in his arms,
and said he is from me and I am from him;
who taught you submission to only the Most-High,
to stand up against tyranny no matter the cost;
his beautiful boy the image of his grandfather,
the noor of his eyes, his heart, his everything.
You miss every majlis as you stare into your own little boy’s eyes
and pray he grows into his name and carries it well.
You are thirty-one.
Your eldest has a million questions about the way the world works.
Muharram arrives and she asks,
“Why do we have to go to the majlis?”
You know the answer –
without the majlis, we cease to be.
But you don’t tell her this. Instead,
you dress your children in black,
pack your bag with snacks and coloring pages,
and in the car ride to the majlis
you thank your parents for this weight in your heart,
the lump in your throat,
the pool in your eyes.
The thought of Rubab14 breaks you.
You turn to your daughter,
and tell her about a little girl just like her,
a little girl named Sakina.
1 Aza is the remembrance of Husayn. Farsh-e-aza is the ground upon which we gather to remember Husayn, often covered with a crisp white sheet stretching across the room, or many white sheets pinned together.
2 For Shia Muslims this is the annual gathering in remembrance of Imam Husayn’s martyrdom at Karbala during the Islamic month of Muharram.
3 Melodious poetry of lamentation. Noha, singular.
4 Youngest daughter of Imam Husayn, age 4.
5 The Umayyad forces cut off water supply to Imam Husayn and his companions, including children, for three days.
6 Son of Imam Hassan, nephew of Imam Husayn, age 13.
7 The tenth of Muharram, the day Imam Husayn and his companions were martyred in Karbala.
8 The oral tradition of the majlis has a specific structure, and masaib are the segment recounting the specific tragedies that befell Imam Husayn, his companions, and his family.
9 Imam Husayn’s daughter, 15, who was sick and was not with her family in Karbala. According to tradition, she wrote a letter to her father, her brother, and other family members but the letter never reached them.
10 Ninth of Muharram, or the eve of Ashura, is considered the most sorrowful of nights for Shia Muslims.
11 A place of gathering for remembrance of the ahlul bayt, or family of Prophet Mohammad, grandfather of Imam Husayn.
12 Brother of Imam Husayn and his standard-bearer, age 34.
13 Son of Imam Husayn, age 18.
14 Wife of Imam Husayn who suffered the loss of her daughter Sakina, as well as of her son Ali Asghar, age 6 months, at Karbala.
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– Mirzya Haider was born in NY, and completed her undergraduate studies at Barnard College in New York City, where she received the Peter S. Prescott Prize for Prose Writing. Currently Mirzya lives in Boston with her husband and two children. She completed her MPH at Harvard University and is passionate about addressing the disparities among immigrants and Muslims in healthcare research and in the literary world. Who gets to be seen? Her writing has appeared in Muftah and Brown Girl Magazine.
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