Beyond Belief Read Online Free PDF Page B

water on our faces and arms and then wiped our wet hands along our heads and feet, I saw women trying not to stare, throwing us glances as they washed their hands, sneaking one extra look as they walked out the door. And I knew, when we stepped outside to pray in the parking lot, the locals of Lost Hills, California would think we were the crazy practitioners of a strange religion.
    In spite of this, when it was my turn to pray I put on the white cotton chador that covered me from head to toe. Dressed in what looked like a ghost costume, I bowed and prostrated on the state map Mama used to cover the gravelly asphalt. To object would have brought on a different kind of shame. Instead I prayed quickly, my chador billowing up in the hot wind, my uncle calling out, “Slow down.” I prayed that no one was watching.
    At the mosque, the church’s pews stood against the walls of what had once been the nave. An enormous chandelier, donated by the Iraqi owners of a crystal shop, hung in its center, and a curtain stretched across the area that had been the altar, dividing the men’s section and the women’s section into drastically disproportionate parts.
    At the door designated as the women’s entrance, I balked at the space. The elders sat shoulder to shoulder on the pews pushed against the wall, and the floor was covered with women and children, sitting cross-legged, knee to knee. I pointed out the obvious: There is no room for us. But Mama would not be swayed. We added our shoes to the growing mound by the door and waded through the sea of women and children, stopping to regain our footing in the spaces between their bodies.
    My stepgrandmother soon found room on a pew. Mama bent down to greet and kiss the people she recognized from our yearly visits. At home, Mama was a busy suburban mother juggling work and nursing school, but here she was someone else entirely, more Iraqi, more Shia. From under her scarf and abaya, she spoke to us in Arabic as if English had not conquered her tongue as well as ours. “ Sallemi ,” she prodded us along to greet her friends with the traditional “ Assalmu Alaikum, ” followed by a kiss on each cheek.
    Mama had relatives in the area that had arrived earlier. They now pulled their purses into their laps to make room for us. Then the Seyyid’s voice carried over the partition, at first didactic and then afflicted with the weight of the tale on his lips. Mama stopped her crying and urged me to pay attention. “If you listen,” she promised, “you’ll understand.”
    I hated being told this. We had been making this journey for years now, but the only things I knew about the story of Imam Husayn were the things Mama had told me in English. I knew he and his family had been on their way to Kufa when the reigning caliph’s army had intercepted them. In one day, Yazid ibn Muawiyya’s men killed Imam Husayn’s valiant brother and handsome nephew, his thirsty six-month-old son, dozens of his followers—all this before beheading the imam himself and setting fire to the camp where the men’s sisters, wives, and daughters awaited their return.
    Knowing this outline was not enough to help me decipher the narrative within the mournful dirge the Seyyid recited, the poignant details that made the women around me sob and slap their thighs. The only thing I recognized were the names that floated out of the Seyyid’s sermon like clear little bubbles, but I longed to understand more. I wanted to know what could be so sad it made people cry every time they heard it year after year. When Mama told meparts of the story, I felt sad, but I never burst into tears. I didn’t know if it was something about how the story was told in Arabic or if it was something about the people listening to it. Did Iraqis cry easier? Was I too American to cry? Or maybe the tears were age related? Maybe only adults cried?
    I studied the faces around me, hoping to find all the young people in the crowd dry-eyed. I’d almost