Despite risks to life and limb, more Shias than ever make a pilgrimage once banned by Saddam, write USAMA REDHAand TINA SUSMAN
A SHIA pilgrim sits on the pavement outside a Baghdad shrine, clad in black and holding a brown walking stick. He removes his slippers to rest his scratched and bloodied feet. Abu Zahra had just finished four days and 50 miles of walking, from Baghdad to the holy city of Karbala and back, and his feet were sore.
But he had survived. Each year, millions of Shias make religious pilgrimages such as this one, and each year, the death toll from violence along the way can reach into the hundreds. Some are shot by gunmen in passing cars as they trek along the highways in sandals. Many more are blown up by suicide bombers trying to incite sectarian bloodshed.
Which begs the question: why partake in an event almost guaranteed to draw attackers?
The pilgrimage Zahra had just finished was to commemorate the death of the Imam Hussein in 680, and, since it began, more than 60 pilgrims have died in attacks. They include eight killed last Monday in two bombings in Baghdad. Both blasts hit buses carrying Shias back from Karbala.
But Abu Zahra, whose nickname translates as father of Zahra, had an answer for people who wonder why he carried on.
“It is love for Imam Hussein,” he says as the streets around him buzz with pilgrims filling up on free food, tea and water at stands set up especially for the occasion. “Even the babies in the cradles love him and slap their chests for him.”
No official numbers are kept on how many people take part in pilgrimages, which remain a bit of a novelty in Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Arab dictatorship, such displays of Shia devotion were not permitted.
But since Saddam’s removal in April 2003, pilgrimages have evolved into nationwide holidays that leave shops shuttered for days, paralyse business activities and cripple traffic as roads fill with pilgrims moving on foot, in buses and crammed into the backs of flatbed trucks.
Some beat themselves bloody in ritual displays of mourning for Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, who was slain in battle in Karbala.
And the numbers participating in pilgrimages continue to rise. “I’m surprised,” says Ahmad Hassan, a vendor in Khadamiya, the Baghdad neighbourhood that is the site of one of Iraq’s holiest Shia shrines.
For the first time, he says, he had seen local officials walking amid the crowds, apparently no longer fearful of bombers. “In all my life I never witnessed such a thing.”
Outside the capital, the crowds move along highways lined with colourful tents offering food and drinks and blasting tinny religious music from cheap speakers. It was at one such rest stop last Friday that a woman blew herself up and killed at least 35 people.
Some pilgrims see the trek as a religious duty that will bring rewards of good health and happiness. Yaser Ali, a taxi driver, missed four days’ work to walk to Karbala and back. Saad was setting aside his studies. Um Qais, a housewife holding her 10-month-old baby, was exhausted but figured it was better to make the walk than sit at home, watching it on TV.
“The explosions will not stop us,” says Abu Zahra. He is a construction worker and had to miss a week of work but was grateful for the opportunity to walk his feet raw.
Under Saddam, Zahra had served 28 years in the Iraqi army and been shot twice in his legs: once in the first Gulf War and again during the US invasion.
But at a time of increased Iraqi impatience with the American military presence, Abu Zahra was unashamed to admit that he used the pilgrimage to pray for former president George W Bush. “I pray for him because he freed me,” Abu Zahra says, referring to Saddam’s removal.
“Let me tell you something I witnessed,” Abu Zahra says. “There was a blind man who was walking with a guide to Karbala. He slept, and in the morning he started to scream, ‘I can see!’” He says he saw another man get up from his wheelchair and walk.
"They say we are crazy for doing these things," Abu Zahra says. "I say: 'Yes, that's right. We are crazy in the love of Imam Hussein.'" The he sits down and massages his feet. – ( LA Times-Washington Postservice)