showed. His beard must have been at least ɻecked with
white, his eyes and mouth etched around with deep
lines. Yet the posters that today ɻood Iraqi and Iranian
markets show an extraordinarily handsome man in his
twenties. Long black hair cascades down to his
shoulders. His beard is full and soft, not a gray hair to be
seen. His face is unlined, glowing with youth, and his
dark eyes are soft but determined, sad and yet conɹdent,
as though they were seeing all the joy and all the misery
in the world, and embracing joy and misery alike.
In the West, the posters are often mistaken for
somewhat more muscular images of Jesus, and indeed
the resemblance is striking. If Ali was the foundation
ɹgure of Shia Islam, Hussein was to become its
sacriɹcial icon. The story of what happened to him once
he reached Iraq would become the Passion story of
Shiism—its emotional and spiritual core.
Yet as Hussein’s caravan threaded its way out of the
mountains and onto the high desert, a dispassionate
observer might have taken one look and thought that he
was almost destined to fail. If his aim was to reclaim the
caliphate, this small group seemed pitifully inadequate
to the task. The line of camels traveled slowly, for they
carried the women and children of his family, with only
seventy-two armed warriors for protection and just a few
horses tied to the camels by their reins. Nevertheless, the
group rode with assurance, conɹdent that once they
arrived, the whole of Iraq would rise up under their