Witnessing 'pools of human blood': A controversial way to spend Ashoura

NABATIEH, Lebanon - One of the best ways not to mess up a journalistic assignment is to ask for shrewd advice from people who know more about the subject than you do.

For a recent assignment in southern Lebanon, colleagues gave pragmatic advice: “Wear shoes you don't mind getting bloodied – you will walk in pools of human blood by the end of it.” 

“If you are icky about blood, you might want to have a scarf that you can cover your mouth with, because if you are taking photos you - and your camera - will be blood spattered. 

“Don’t wear red.”

“[There is] the strong smell of a lot of blood…”

Before wildly exaggerated images come to mind, I was not going into an active war zone. I would need a bit more than a scarf for that. I was heading to the southern Lebanese town of Nabatieh to report on Ashoura, the culmination of an annual 10-day period of mourning observed by some Shia Muslims.

The commemoration marks the death of Imam Hussein, who was beheaded in 680 by forces of the Sunni Caliph Yezid I at the Battle of Karbala, in modern day Iraq.

While the Shia observe the festival the world over, Nabatieh is remarkable as one of the few places in the world where tatbir is still practised. This particular form of self-flagellation sees mourners make incisions in their foreheads and hit the wound repeatedly to keep the blood flowing. The practice is controversial – a fatwa bans it in Iran, while Hezbollah discourages it among followers in Lebanon. It is totally alien to Sunni Muslims, who consider it haram – forbidden.

A fatwa bans tatbir in Iran, while Hezbollah discourages it among followers in Lebanon

What did I feel about witnessing people deliberately hurt themselves? Fortunately none too squeamish, I was not that bothered about the blood.  In honesty, more than anything, I was acutely aware that I was intruding on a religious festival. Albeit with the correct permits, I was barging in on the most important mourning period in the Shia calendar.

But that is my job, to an extent. It is also my job to be open-minded and report what I see. It is my job to witness things – like people slapping themselves on the forehead with swords – which others may find disturbing. It is my job – and that of other journalists – to talk about things that people might find troublesome. If you don’t go, you don’t know, as a tabloid reporter once told me. And if reporters like me do not go and do not write, English-language readers are not confronted with ideas that are foreign to them. And that is the source of a lot of social and cultural problems.

Worthy journalistic intentions aside, I wanted to see the festival for myself. Given that a third of Lebanon’s population is Shia Muslim, I felt it was important to learn more about it.
 
So I ignored those whom I had previously heard – how to put this elegantly? – curse Shia self-flagellation. I packed my rucksack with a black scarf- as advised - my camera, notebook, and set off for southern Lebanon.
 
Two trucks parked at right angles across the road entering Nabatieh were the first sign of the tight security presence. Two more checkpoints followed, at one of which we were almost turned away for being ajnabi – foreigners. Guards directed me into a brown canvas tent, where two women in chadors searched all my belongings – to a chorus of apologies for delaying me, and a wall of smiles. “We are so sorry, we have to do this,” they said.

The atmosphere was peculiar. The day began slowly, to the echo of loudspeakers reciting verses of the Quran, and men parading bloodlessly, praising Imam Hussein and his father Ali, both of who are revered highly among Shia.

A lot of blood

Soon the blood started to flow, as men gathered in groups outside Nabatieh’s Hussainiya – a Shia congregation hall – and made incisions in each other’s foreheads. Chanting “Haidar, Haidar!” – a nickname for Hussein’s father Ali, meaning lion – they paraded through Nabatieh’s central streets. Things became more boisterous, although never, at least as far as I saw, violent. There was a lot of blood. Drums drummed. Men flayed their backs with chains and razors. Blood squirted. Women, decked out in black and green, took photos with hundreds of camera phones like paparazzi documenting the whole thing. 

Was it revolting?

The Roman playwright Terence was a Berber, born in or near Carthage in modern-day Tunisia, famous for supposedly having said the words, “Nihil humanum a me alienum puto” – “Nothing human is alien to me.”

As blood from thousands of self-inflicted wounds splattered my rucksack and notebook, I thought back to those words from Terence. Nothing human is alien to me.

It was as blood from thousands of self-inflicted wounds splattered my rucksack and notebook that I thought back to those words from Terence. Nothing human is alien to me. Or at least it should not be. But of course it is.
 
Our immediate reaction to self-harm and blood is to recoil, to find it repulsive. But here they were, thousands of men and boys, and a few women too, having their heads sliced open, and working to keep their blood pouring.
 
And it felt alien, particularly the sight of nine-year-old boys being egged on by their fathers when whacking themselves on the head with a two-foot sword, making me hope they would get to the medical tent soon afterwards.

But it did not feel particularly horrifying. This was how some people interpreted their religion. It was not for me to say whether it was a permissible interpretation of Islam or not. It was simply my role to document it.

It was not for me to say whether it was a permissible interpretation of Islam or not. 

With this in mind, we should not forget that a minority of Catholics also practice self-harm. Celibate members of the Opus Dei branch of the Church use cilices – basically garters with spikes – to inflict pain on themselves. Others whip themselves using an instrument called a “discipline”.
 
Knowing this, we are less than right to brand self-flagellation an “Islamic” practice, to be frowned upon.
 
Ashoura is the highlight of a period of mourning. And indeed there were women robed in black, groaning quietly as they played the roles of members of Hussein’s family.
 
“I am not in pain and I am not scared,” said Hussein, a 24-year-old from the nearby village of Harouf, his face caked in drying blood. “I am doing this for the love of Hussein.”

Mourning and joy

But there was a festive atmosphere too. Among the sadness and grief that attendees said they felt for fellow Shia around the world – the attack on a funeral procession in Yemen the week previously, and deaths in Bahrain were cited over and over – there was joviality. Selfies were taken in abundance. Boys posed for bloody photos, which I could just see becoming Facebook profile pictures.

Ahmed, who works as a supervisor in a security company and gave only his first name, comes to his native Lebanon from New York for three months every year. “It shows our loyalty to God and Imam Hussein. We are not perfect and we have some things that may seem a little strange, but we are on the right path.”

'We are not perfect and we have some things that may seem a little strange, but we are on the right path.'

Vendors sold corn on the cob and much-needed water under the 27C heat. Espresso machines rumbled. Flags waved. Groups of friends greeted each other, with large numbers of teenagers dressed in the trendy green scarves that I had seen throughout the mourning period across Lebanon. Boys wore them round the neck, cowboy-style, girls as hijab. Families were out in force, along with babies, dressed in black with “Ya Hussein” headbands. In a very peculiar way, I felt like I was at an English summer fete.

What really upset me most was not the blood, or the fact that tatbir inevitably leads some people to believe, incorrectly, that all Muslims perform the blood-letting ritual.

What saddened me most was the reaction of some other Muslim friends when I posted pictures of the Ashoura proceedings on social media.

“They’re the terrorists,” said one. “Crazy,” said another. “They are donkeys,” read a third comment. I thought back to Terence. How far we have to go, before nothing that is human is alien.