he kept charging. Astride him, Hussein struck out left
and right with his sword and for a few moments, it
hardly seemed to matter that he was only one man
against four thousand. “By God I have never seen his
like before or since,” one of Shimr’s men would
remember. “The foot soldiers retreated from him as goats
retreat from an advancing wolf.”
But it could not last. “Why are you waiting?” Shimr
yelled at his troops. “You sons of men who urinate at
both ends! Kill him, or may your mothers be bereaved of
you!” An arrow struck home in Hussein’s shoulder, the
force of it throwing him to the ground, and they ɹnally
crowded in on him.
By the time they were done, there were thirty-three
knife and sword wounds on his body. Even that was not
enough. As though trying to hide the evidence, they
spurred their horses over his corpse again and again,
trampling the grandson of the Prophet, the last of the
five People of the Cloak, into the dust of Karbala.
At that moment, what the Sunnis consider history
became sacred history for the Shia, and the aura of
sacredness would permeate the memories of what
happened next. There is no mention in the earliest
accounts of Hussein’s three-year-old daughter Sukayna
roaming the battleɹeld; no mention either of tears
streaming from the eyes of his white horse or of the
sudden appearance of two white doves. But who can