“Man journeys in darkness, and his destiny journeys
toward him,” he said, and traveled on.
Nobody disputes what happened. What is in dispute is
why it happened. And that question hinges on the
unknowable—on what Hussein was thinking.
Why did he continue when he knew that his cause
was already lost? Was he so convinced of the rightness of
his claim that he could no longer judge reality? So full of
nasb—that inborn quality of nobility and honor—that he
could not imagine anything but triumph for the
righteousness of his cause? So high-minded that he was,
in the end, merely naive? Did he act in desperation or
out of the purest of motives? In sheer folly or in supreme
wisdom?
He was not a warrior or a statesman. He was a revered
scholar, honored since his brother’s death as the one
who more than any man alive embodied the spirit of
Muhammad, and he was no longer a young man. Why
not be content to live out his days in the peace and quiet
of Mecca or Medina? Why not leave the business of
politics and power to those who could handle it? And
why place his fate in the hands of the Kufans, the people
who not twenty years before had refused his father’s call
to arms against Muawiya? They had knuckled under
ɹrst to Muawiya and his governor Ziyad, and now to
Yazid and his governor Ubaydallah. Did Hussein really