This year's Moharram

Tonight is Moharram, and Rosey’s not feeling well and has already gone to sleep, and the entire slum is awake and engaged, and I feel too much energy in the place to just stay in my room.  So I go out, without much purpose in mind. 

I wander in a big circle around the slum.  A young boy with a bit of a mental problem is excited to see me and says hi.  An acquaintance of mine pulls me over and sits me down in a chair next to a huge caldron of chai on a fire.  He offers me some.  The boy sits across from me.  We make a bit of small talk, I appreciate the hospitality, and I get up again. 

I wander over to the vicinity of a home we used to stay in two years ago.  At a turn in the alley I am undecided about where to go next, and a woman I used to know sees me stall.  “Where are you going?”  “Uh, just wandering….looking at tazias,” I reply.  Tazias are the symbolic crafts that are being displayed on this night.  She says, “Oh, then come over here, there’s a tazia right here!”  She pulls me over in the direction of our old room.  We stop at the tiny gully right next to it, and I see that the tazia isn’t just in the alley or doorway like most of the others, but tucked back into a home I know.  “Go ahead,” she insists.  I reluctantly walk in.

Tucked back behind this tight dirt alleyway is one of the poorest families we’ve ever known.  I walk inside, and indeed a beautiful tazia is set up just inside their home.  The thin paper-and-sticks structure appears only slightly less substantial than the family’s own plastic-and-sticks residence.  A large number of children and a few adult women are sitting in front of it, praying.  They see me and invite me to sit down with them.  I politely excuse myself and try to turn back.  “No, no, I’m sorry, I don’t want to disturb your peace, see you again.”  They insist again, saying, “You must sit, auntie wants to speak to you.”  When I understand what they are saying, I notice that around the corner just out of my view, the matriarch of the family is sitting down.  I can’t deny her, and so I sit down in their midst.

We don’t know her well.  The one time Rose and I visited her home together, she broke down crying as she showed us her incredibly poor residence.  This time the tazia gives her more confidence as a host.  She welcomes me, asks me how I doing, asks where Rosey is and how she is doing.  The other women listen with rapt attention and toss in their questions too.  Many of the children listen to us, while others continue praying their night’s vigil.

I note that this is not going to be a short visit and get used to sitting there.  On one hand I feel uncomfortable to be an outsider in a place of prayer and a man in a place of women and children.  On the other hand, everyone is so peaceful and so incredibly respectful to me that I am put at ease.  One young women in particular engages most actively with me along with the matriarch.  Their questions run the gamat from my religious beliefs to what I cook in my home.  My statement that Rosey cooks the rotis while I cook the veggies elicits laughter and surprise. My statement that I follow Isa the Messiah and that we don't practice the same traditions elicits what appears to be respect.  Most of all, everyone wants to just to get to know me better and treat me well.

When I first sat down the women offered me some sweets that had been prepared specially for that night.  As time draws out, they begin offering me more and more – lentils…chicken curry…more sweets.  I refuse everything the first two times it is offered, but it becomes clear that they won’t be satisfied with my visit unless I have some of everything they have.  The young woman giving me the food, the same one who has been asking me questions, looks so proud of what she has to give and a huge smile never leaves her face.  I eat the treats they lay before me and contemplate, not for the first time, the amazing circumstance of this incredibly poor family in a plastic-and-sticks home in the mud serving and feeding me with all they have to give. 

I have come here to serve the poor, and once again I am struck by how deeply even the very very poor want to serve me.  I feel we’ve shared a sacred space tonight.