never be consummated. They stretch another, smaller
canopy over a cradle and ɹll it with oʃerings for
Hussein’s infant son: candies and toys. They implore
Hussein to intercede for them and for their children in
their twenty-ɹrst-century lives, to keep them safe from
drugs and violence and any of life’s other temptations
and dangers. And they mourn, beating their breasts and
slapping their cheeks faster and faster as their chanting
picks up its pace—“Hussein, Hussein, Hussein, Hussein,
Hussein”—until they have no strength left.
Everything culminates on the tenth day, the day of the
processions. Men and boys march by the hundreds in the
villages, by the thousands and tens of thousands in the
cities. Whole squadrons of men beat their chests in
unison, their hands clenched into hollow ɹsts, the better
to reverberate against the rib cage. And with each step,
each blow, “Oh Hussein, oh Hussein ...”
The echoing thud of one man striking himself this
way is sobering; the sound of thousands can be heard
miles away, as loud as the tolling of a cathedral bell at
Easter, and far more terrifying for the knowledge that
this is the sound of flesh on flesh.
Some go further. They beat themselves not with their
ɹsts but with ɻails of chains, and at the end of each
length of chain, a small blade. They ɻick the ɻails over
the left shoulder, then over the right, again and again
until their backs are bloodied. A few even use knives to