The Death of the Sayyid
Last Wednesday I went to what is known as the Fatiha, to pay my respects to the recently deceased Abdul Aziz Al Hakim. This entry is not about the political positions of the Hakim family, with which I have differed, particularly on the role of religion in politics, nor is it about Iraqi law or politics at all. But as with Senator Kennedy, whether one agrees with the man or not, a giant has passed, and great respect is due.
The Fatiha serves effectively as a wake, it is the place where all come to offer condolences, though by the time it occurs, the body of the deceased has long been buried per the rules of the shari'a. Instead, one arrives, shakes the hands and kisses the close relatives and friends who stand in line at the front of the hall, makes their way in, reads the opening chapter of the Qur'an (known as the fatiha), and then sits and has conversation with friends and others nearby for perhaps half an hour, after which one leaves, reading the fatiha again just before departing. If we were not in Ramadan, then coffee of the strong, Turkish like variety, would be served as well in between our readings.
But this fatiha was like none other I have witnessed. Once we passed beyond the Green Zone's walls into the open square that enters us into the neighborhood of Jadiriya, where the fatiha was taking place, but still at least 1.5 miles from it, the traffic was entirely stopped. This was Freedom Square, and marks a notable point in Baghdad, as it is surrounded on three sides by the river Tigris. Behind me, the suspension bridge and the entrance to the Green Zone. To my right, the Jadiriya bridge, and the way back to where my late grandmother used to live, and where I used to live and where I wrote my memoirs. I cannot go there any more, the neighborhood is not safe. It is Sunni territory, and I am a Shi'i. Sunnis no doubt have similar stories of homes in Shi'a neighborhoods.
But our destination was straight ahead, where the two level bridge was, though we were not intending to cross it. In these times, the two sided bridge cuts the posh neighborhood of Jadiriya into two. On one side is what is called the Kurdistan Regionate of Baghdad ("KRB"), guarded by the Kurdish pesh merga and housing the Kurdish officials in Iraq, including its President, Jalal Talabani. On the other is Shi'a territory, and specifically, the Supreme Council's space, protected by the Badr Brigades and holding their high officials. These Shi'a tend to get along reasonably well with the Kurds, and so no trouble emerges at the boundary point, under the bridge. The fatiha was on the Shi'a side.
We were in an official car, and a protected one, but really there was no point once we reached the square, which was really more of a roundabout. There was no real way to negotiate the traffic, in the logjam we sat for nearly an hour, to advance about three quarters of a mile. All had jammed in, all intending to pay their respects to the late Sayyid. Late model dark tinted SUV's as ours, 1980's Brazilian volkswagens that were missing a door, or a windshield, or a headlight, an old man beating his donkey furiously, as if the donkey could be made to part the cars, KIA vans loaded with men from the tribes of the provinces of the south, beating their chests and calling for blessings upon the Prophet and the People of his House, all shared the roundabout with us, all pressing, pushing convulsing forward. From the window I looked to our destination, only hundreds of meters away but seemingly ever distant as we made our way forward. From my vantage point, as I neared the gate, I could see only the pesh merga who were eyeing these crowds with a mixture of detached bemusement and caution. Bemusement because it seemed a great deal of fuss to them no doubt for the death of one man, caution because we were Arabs and therefore an eternal source of danger to Kurdistan.
But of course for the Shi'a this was not just one man, an era was passing with the death of this Sayyid. His father, Sayyid Muhsin, was the Grand Ayatollah of Najaf until 1970, just as the Ba'ath began to tighten their grip on Iraq. In this, as in all else, however, the man pales in comparison to the myth. Who Sayyid Muhsin was, and is, less important than what he represented, and continues to represent. He represented the voice, the face, and the source of Shi'a consciousness in what was a turbulent and violent Iraq. A dispossessed and marginalized Shi'a population was flexing its muscles, seeking a greater share of power and of consideration and respect, in two directions. The first was through a repudiation of the clerical classes and the embrace of communism. The second was through the clerical classes themselves, led by Sayyid Muhsin himself, who sought to fill that role, and remain relevant to the Shia lay masses while not involving himself too extensively in the political machinations of Baghdad. With the international fall of the communist movement, nobody much thinks about the communist influences in the old Iraq, but everyone remembers Sayyid Muhsin as the voice of the Shi'a as the Shi'a resurgence first took roots in Iraq, roots that have now grown and placed them squarely in control of the country. Travel Iraq and far and wide, and one is hard pressed to find someone who is both Shi'a (secular or religious) and has an unkind thing to say of Sayyid Muhsin.
But as Shi'a consciousness rose, so did the Ba'ath, and a clash was inevitable. The Ba'ath won, and the sons of Sayyid Muhsen paid an awful price. One by one they were killed. The husbands of their daughters, one of whom was my uncle, were likewise killed. In the end, only two sons were left--Muhammad Baqir, and Abdul Aziz, who fled to Iran and together began an opposition movement that would later become the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, renamed recently the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. To those of us in the diaspora raised on the myth of Sayyid Muhsin, it all seemed a little odd, and terribly tragic. This man, the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhsin, who as children we had been told had singlehandedly brought us from marginalization to relevance was not only himself dead, but survived by two sons isolated in Teheran who certainly didn't seem very important to us, and were living on fantasies of a return to Baghdad that seemed absurd.
But as the founder of the Shi'a sect Ali ibn Abi Talib says, in all of time there are two days: a day for you, and a day against you, so when the day is for you, restrain your arrogance and when it is against you, be patient. Two decades of patience and one miracle later, and the bastard who killed the Hakims was hanged, and the Hakim brothers were back in Baghdad, leading at one time the largest political force there was. When Muhammad Baqir Al Hakim was killed in Najaf after a Friday Sermon, thereby earning the moniker the martyr of the pulpit, one was left. That one was Abdul Aziz, the recently deceased. It was his fatiha we were attending. That he and Senator Kennedy passed at the same time was no small irony. Two representatives of a time, the same time, when giants walked the earth were no longer among us.
When we were finally let out of that damn car to walk the last distance ourselves, because we could pass no further so that we could offer our respects, say the fatiha and sit, moving on foot proved as difficult as the car. There were rich, and there were poor pushing their way forward. Men in suits (all men, only men, these affairs are strictly segregated), and others in track suits. Single older man in long dishdashas wailing as the tribes advance, each about ten minutes apart from the one before, with a drum beat they moving rhythmically, almost dancing, as they advance and beat their chests and chant. I cannot move, I can barely breathe. On my left is the British Ambassador and I shift right to be caught in the middle of a tribe advancing to offer their respects. it is loud, they move quickly, I cannot avoid them. The shouting becomes ever louder. We suffer the pain of Ammar, we suffer the pain of Ammar, we suffer the pain of Ammar they chant, and dance. Sayyid Ammar is the eldest son of Abdul Aziz, but at this moment I search desperately for a way out. The scene is touching, and in its diversity incredible, but I could be crushed. Finally I find my colleagues, at the VIP entrance, where the British Ambassador enters. I rush there, and we make our way forward. It still took us twenty minutes to reach the front. I would not believe anyone who told me there were less than 100,000 in attendance. it was easily the number at a college football game, perhaps more.
Those who could make it in were plainly people of influence, and plainly there to see, and be seen, by others of influence. Relative to the fascinating din outside, the conversation inside was insufferable name dropping, as the readers of the Qur'an in front, voices amplified by their microphones, interrupted this I know this guy nonsense with references to Judgment and Eternity. The irony seemed lost on the suits, who kept looking for others to meet and greet. Just then, the lights darkened and off went the Qur'an and over the speakers a voice was heard loudly and clearly:
May the blessings of God be upon you, my lord and my leader, Father of Abdullah.
May the blessings of God be upon you, son of the Apostle of God
He who grasps on to you has no fear, and he who seeks refuge with you has found his sanctuary
It is my misfortune that I was not with you, sir, for I would have earned a glorious victory.
This was the start of the lamentation of the death of Hussein, it is the story in which Shi'ism envelopes itself, the essence of its faith. The room quieted, the din outside could be heard to lessen, and the weeping for the death of the Prophet's Grandson began. It even shut the politically ambitious up for a bit. Even a name dropping power seeker knows better than to interrupt the story of the death of Hussein. The Qur'an may be spoken over, but not this.
Yet somehow, though there was weeping, this time, it was different. When the brothers were in Iran, when the Hakims had been decimated, when the bastard and his two bastard sons ran Iraq, when to read the lamentation was to invite suspicion, the weeping seemed more dramatic, more urgent. Here there was sadness, for Hussein, for the deceased Abdul Aziz, for the passing of a grand era, but there was also some sense of contentment. For this crowd, it hadn't turned out so badly. It certainly could have been worse. He could have been buried to little fanfare in Teheran, while Saddam ordered national celebrations. But there had been enough days against the Hakims, this was one for them. And a richly deserved one at that.
HAH
The Fatiha serves effectively as a wake, it is the place where all come to offer condolences, though by the time it occurs, the body of the deceased has long been buried per the rules of the shari'a. Instead, one arrives, shakes the hands and kisses the close relatives and friends who stand in line at the front of the hall, makes their way in, reads the opening chapter of the Qur'an (known as the fatiha), and then sits and has conversation with friends and others nearby for perhaps half an hour, after which one leaves, reading the fatiha again just before departing. If we were not in Ramadan, then coffee of the strong, Turkish like variety, would be served as well in between our readings.
But this fatiha was like none other I have witnessed. Once we passed beyond the Green Zone's walls into the open square that enters us into the neighborhood of Jadiriya, where the fatiha was taking place, but still at least 1.5 miles from it, the traffic was entirely stopped. This was Freedom Square, and marks a notable point in Baghdad, as it is surrounded on three sides by the river Tigris. Behind me, the suspension bridge and the entrance to the Green Zone. To my right, the Jadiriya bridge, and the way back to where my late grandmother used to live, and where I used to live and where I wrote my memoirs. I cannot go there any more, the neighborhood is not safe. It is Sunni territory, and I am a Shi'i. Sunnis no doubt have similar stories of homes in Shi'a neighborhoods.
But our destination was straight ahead, where the two level bridge was, though we were not intending to cross it. In these times, the two sided bridge cuts the posh neighborhood of Jadiriya into two. On one side is what is called the Kurdistan Regionate of Baghdad ("KRB"), guarded by the Kurdish pesh merga and housing the Kurdish officials in Iraq, including its President, Jalal Talabani. On the other is Shi'a territory, and specifically, the Supreme Council's space, protected by the Badr Brigades and holding their high officials. These Shi'a tend to get along reasonably well with the Kurds, and so no trouble emerges at the boundary point, under the bridge. The fatiha was on the Shi'a side.
We were in an official car, and a protected one, but really there was no point once we reached the square, which was really more of a roundabout. There was no real way to negotiate the traffic, in the logjam we sat for nearly an hour, to advance about three quarters of a mile. All had jammed in, all intending to pay their respects to the late Sayyid. Late model dark tinted SUV's as ours, 1980's Brazilian volkswagens that were missing a door, or a windshield, or a headlight, an old man beating his donkey furiously, as if the donkey could be made to part the cars, KIA vans loaded with men from the tribes of the provinces of the south, beating their chests and calling for blessings upon the Prophet and the People of his House, all shared the roundabout with us, all pressing, pushing convulsing forward. From the window I looked to our destination, only hundreds of meters away but seemingly ever distant as we made our way forward. From my vantage point, as I neared the gate, I could see only the pesh merga who were eyeing these crowds with a mixture of detached bemusement and caution. Bemusement because it seemed a great deal of fuss to them no doubt for the death of one man, caution because we were Arabs and therefore an eternal source of danger to Kurdistan.
But of course for the Shi'a this was not just one man, an era was passing with the death of this Sayyid. His father, Sayyid Muhsin, was the Grand Ayatollah of Najaf until 1970, just as the Ba'ath began to tighten their grip on Iraq. In this, as in all else, however, the man pales in comparison to the myth. Who Sayyid Muhsin was, and is, less important than what he represented, and continues to represent. He represented the voice, the face, and the source of Shi'a consciousness in what was a turbulent and violent Iraq. A dispossessed and marginalized Shi'a population was flexing its muscles, seeking a greater share of power and of consideration and respect, in two directions. The first was through a repudiation of the clerical classes and the embrace of communism. The second was through the clerical classes themselves, led by Sayyid Muhsin himself, who sought to fill that role, and remain relevant to the Shia lay masses while not involving himself too extensively in the political machinations of Baghdad. With the international fall of the communist movement, nobody much thinks about the communist influences in the old Iraq, but everyone remembers Sayyid Muhsin as the voice of the Shi'a as the Shi'a resurgence first took roots in Iraq, roots that have now grown and placed them squarely in control of the country. Travel Iraq and far and wide, and one is hard pressed to find someone who is both Shi'a (secular or religious) and has an unkind thing to say of Sayyid Muhsin.
But as Shi'a consciousness rose, so did the Ba'ath, and a clash was inevitable. The Ba'ath won, and the sons of Sayyid Muhsen paid an awful price. One by one they were killed. The husbands of their daughters, one of whom was my uncle, were likewise killed. In the end, only two sons were left--Muhammad Baqir, and Abdul Aziz, who fled to Iran and together began an opposition movement that would later become the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, renamed recently the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. To those of us in the diaspora raised on the myth of Sayyid Muhsin, it all seemed a little odd, and terribly tragic. This man, the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhsin, who as children we had been told had singlehandedly brought us from marginalization to relevance was not only himself dead, but survived by two sons isolated in Teheran who certainly didn't seem very important to us, and were living on fantasies of a return to Baghdad that seemed absurd.
But as the founder of the Shi'a sect Ali ibn Abi Talib says, in all of time there are two days: a day for you, and a day against you, so when the day is for you, restrain your arrogance and when it is against you, be patient. Two decades of patience and one miracle later, and the bastard who killed the Hakims was hanged, and the Hakim brothers were back in Baghdad, leading at one time the largest political force there was. When Muhammad Baqir Al Hakim was killed in Najaf after a Friday Sermon, thereby earning the moniker the martyr of the pulpit, one was left. That one was Abdul Aziz, the recently deceased. It was his fatiha we were attending. That he and Senator Kennedy passed at the same time was no small irony. Two representatives of a time, the same time, when giants walked the earth were no longer among us.
When we were finally let out of that damn car to walk the last distance ourselves, because we could pass no further so that we could offer our respects, say the fatiha and sit, moving on foot proved as difficult as the car. There were rich, and there were poor pushing their way forward. Men in suits (all men, only men, these affairs are strictly segregated), and others in track suits. Single older man in long dishdashas wailing as the tribes advance, each about ten minutes apart from the one before, with a drum beat they moving rhythmically, almost dancing, as they advance and beat their chests and chant. I cannot move, I can barely breathe. On my left is the British Ambassador and I shift right to be caught in the middle of a tribe advancing to offer their respects. it is loud, they move quickly, I cannot avoid them. The shouting becomes ever louder. We suffer the pain of Ammar, we suffer the pain of Ammar, we suffer the pain of Ammar they chant, and dance. Sayyid Ammar is the eldest son of Abdul Aziz, but at this moment I search desperately for a way out. The scene is touching, and in its diversity incredible, but I could be crushed. Finally I find my colleagues, at the VIP entrance, where the British Ambassador enters. I rush there, and we make our way forward. It still took us twenty minutes to reach the front. I would not believe anyone who told me there were less than 100,000 in attendance. it was easily the number at a college football game, perhaps more.
Those who could make it in were plainly people of influence, and plainly there to see, and be seen, by others of influence. Relative to the fascinating din outside, the conversation inside was insufferable name dropping, as the readers of the Qur'an in front, voices amplified by their microphones, interrupted this I know this guy nonsense with references to Judgment and Eternity. The irony seemed lost on the suits, who kept looking for others to meet and greet. Just then, the lights darkened and off went the Qur'an and over the speakers a voice was heard loudly and clearly:
May the blessings of God be upon you, my lord and my leader, Father of Abdullah.
May the blessings of God be upon you, son of the Apostle of God
He who grasps on to you has no fear, and he who seeks refuge with you has found his sanctuary
It is my misfortune that I was not with you, sir, for I would have earned a glorious victory.
This was the start of the lamentation of the death of Hussein, it is the story in which Shi'ism envelopes itself, the essence of its faith. The room quieted, the din outside could be heard to lessen, and the weeping for the death of the Prophet's Grandson began. It even shut the politically ambitious up for a bit. Even a name dropping power seeker knows better than to interrupt the story of the death of Hussein. The Qur'an may be spoken over, but not this.
Yet somehow, though there was weeping, this time, it was different. When the brothers were in Iran, when the Hakims had been decimated, when the bastard and his two bastard sons ran Iraq, when to read the lamentation was to invite suspicion, the weeping seemed more dramatic, more urgent. Here there was sadness, for Hussein, for the deceased Abdul Aziz, for the passing of a grand era, but there was also some sense of contentment. For this crowd, it hadn't turned out so badly. It certainly could have been worse. He could have been buried to little fanfare in Teheran, while Saddam ordered national celebrations. But there had been enough days against the Hakims, this was one for them. And a richly deserved one at that.
HAH
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