Shia Strength: Muslim Unite Sunni and Shia ZIYARAT (4)

GREAT IMPRESSIONS --- A Ziyarat Travelogue (4)

Syed-Mohsin Naquvi January 2009

KARBALA AND ITS INHABITANTS

Karbala is a very modest city. It is comparatively a small city. It is also a very crowded city. There are no millionaires in the city of Karbala, at least I did not notice any. But the city thrives and it is full of life. Most of the population seems to be living at a survival level.

The infrastructure in Iraq has been completely destroyed, in fact obliterated. Every building such as a hotel has its own power generator. The generator runs for about two hours and then it stops and the load is transferred to the battery. After two hours the battery runs down and the generator restarts to take over the load and also charge the battery. Nobody told me this but I actually worked it out myself after waking up in Najaf during our first day in Najaf in the middle of the night when I heard a big bang and all the lights went out. Momentarily, all the lights came on again.

Even some shops in the shopping area were seen running their own little portable generators to light up the shop.

Obviously, so many generators running every where means serious pollution.

Drinking water is brought from outside in bottles. There is running water available in hotels but it is not potable. We had running hot water in our bathrooms in the hotel both in Najaf as well as in Karbala.

Shops in Karbala were well stocked with objects of every-day need. Most of the shopping that we did was KAFAN (shroud for the dead), clay tablets and prayer beads, and my wife ordered a bunting for the Alam of Hazrat Abbas that she decorates every year.

We did not have to buy any food anywhere because our group leader had worked out an arrangement with hotels in Najaf, Karbala and Kazemayn that they would provide three meals-a-day, and it was included in the pre-paid package. All three hotels were successful in providing good healthy food at breakfast, lunch and dinner. That meant that there was no scarcity of food material in Iraq.

As a matter of tradition the management of both shrines in Karbala formally invite every group of the Zaa-e-reen for lunch at least once during their stay in Karbala. We were too. Special arrangements have been made inside the shrine premises to cook the food and there are large dining halls within both shrines to serve that lunch. These dining halls are furnished with large dining tables and chairs (as opposed to the usual Iraqi tradition of Dastarkhwan).

I noticed large projects of rebuilding going on inside Imam Husayn's shrine so a lot of inner halls were not accessible to the visitors. But I suspect there are large reading rooms and a library too inside the shrine which will open in due course of time.

Every Thursday evening (Shab-e-Jum'a) tabarrukat are distributed among those present in the shrine of Imam Husayn. This is a packet of dust (from Karbala) and a piece of green silk that had been touched to the Zareeh (Sacrophagus). Until the days of my early childhood (1950s) the clay tablet that we would get from Karbala and use it as khumra would have a unique fragrance to it which would last for ever. The fragrance used to be so pleasant that we would be driven out of our immature but precocious temptations to eat it, but of course, we were prohibited from doing that. Now the clay tablets do not have that fragrance or any smell at all. I think that is because of the fact that the clay would be collected in the early days from the basement of the actual burial place of Imam Husayn and other martyrs. The clay that we get today is not from the same exact place.

THE ARCHEOLOGY OF KARBALA

We could not visit the shrine of Hurr ibn-e-Yazeed Riyahee because it was under construction. Hurr was the commander of a two thousand strong cavalry brigade in Yazeed's army at Karbala. He had defected on the morning of Ashura and had come to Imam Husayn's side; he had fought for him and was martyred on the battlefield.

On our second day in Karbala our group was led into a narrow alley and we were brought before a huge five story concrete block of flats. On the ground floor of the building right at the street corner an elaborate Imabara had been decorated. The most prominent object in that set up was a very colourfully decorated baby's crib. We were thus introduced to muqaam-e-AliAsghar. Reportedly, this was the location where Imam Husayn had stood holding his baby son in his arms and had asked for water for the baby. The baby, in turn, was pierced with an arrow shot by an archer in Yazeed's army.

WE moved on a few steps and turned left into yet another narrower lane and ended up at a cul-de-sac. Here an arch was decorated and it was marked as muqaam-e-AliAkbar. Apparently this was the location where Imam Husan had found his eighteen year old son, Ali Akbar, lying wounded with a spear through his chest.

The next day we went out through the rows of shops and other buildings and found ourselves at a slightly higher elevation marked by an elaborate arch. WE were told that this was the talla-e-Zaynabia, or the higher ground where Janab-e-Zaynab, Imam Husayn's sister, had stood watching as Imam Husayn was being beheaded by Shimr.

WE also went out of the security zone to visit the date orchard of Imam J'afar as-Sadiq. The Nahr-e-Alqama runs alongside the orchard. We were told that this was not the original Nahr-e-Alqama. In fact, Saddam during, his rule, had the original canal filled up and had its traces completely obliterated. This was a new canal marking the memory of Nahr-e-Alqama since the old original location was already taken over by new buildings. The new canal runs alongside the Sixth Imam's date orchard on the one side and the mosque of the Twelfth Imam on the other side.

When Imam Husayn had arrived at Karbala on the 2^nd of Muharram in the 61^st year of Hijra, he had camped at the banks of Nahr-e-Alqama which was an original subsidiary canal of the river Euphrates. Therefore, it had marked a very significant aspect of the history of the battle of Karbala. That and all other relics of the past are very significant points in the archeology of the Karbala site. It is such a tragedy that over population of the city and its unplanned expansion has left those relics in such a pathetic condition. The Karbala story is a sad story and we all cry and weep for Imam Husayn and other martyrs of Karbala. But that is a different kind of crying and weeping. I wept on the pathetic condition of those relics more than I did for the martyrs of Karbala.

(..... to be continued)

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