I am here in Iraq and one of its famous holy city Karbala is crowded with a huge crowd of 2 crores of disciples from all parts of the world who gathered this year to commemorate chehlum of the holy Prophet Muhammad(PBUH)’s grandson Hazard Imam Hussain a. s. on 20 safer 1439. According to an estimate this is an everlasting huge presence of his disciples this year 2018 which is meant to pay him and his family members and 72 shuhadai Karbala the highest homages and tributes for their cause to save the religion Islam as preached by his grandfather which has message of peace and love for whole humanity over the earth.
My personal feeling while entering Karbala e moalla was that I found this city as old as must be 14 centuries years ago. I meant to say that it was surrounded with muddy or dusty area with poor infrastructure even in this 21 century. Nearly a mile or more area was that where they gathered the wreckages of the past year war in Iraq which gave scary looks. Any how after 2 and a half hour we managed to reach Karbala.We were asked to leave our buses 8 miles away of karbala and were asked to continue walking till harams. It was ok for us but for my mom it was bit difficult to walk. So we boarded their trolly system to reach easily till our hotel. We stayed for three days till the day of 20 safer arrived .What we observed was a different kind of people’s expression of their aqeedat especially by Iraqi, Irani ,or other Arab tribes .They were having jhaloos of men, women and kids and youth. You know when they were reciting majlis while walking in front of haram e mola ghazi Abbas a. s. they were deeply crying and beating drums and very tragic music was on which was so sad to bear at that time. All their young lot was slaping their faces and crying so much. What was the difference was their Arabic expression of aqeedat which is new to watch by me. I was also learning and noticing that these Arab countries had not adopted any other international language or even English in their culture which is their uniqueness I must say. Because I guess they did never felt the need to be merged in any other culture or even allowed any other culture to give them support. Here my analysis allow me to acknowledge my Imam’ s grant sacrifice that it did not allow to change an inch into this place despite ruling over this place by many cruel rulers here which I came to know that they had tried to deconstruct many times the mosuleums of our imams. But miracles of our imams led them change their mind and not to touch these holy places rather they had embellished them so beautifully that speak aloud of their holy cause.
Throughout the harams a lot of fresh mineral packed water ,tin packed drinks, food, fish, sweets, milk, tea, qahwa ,fruits etc were generously served to everyone irrespective of any difference. Hospitality by the Iraqi people, caravan, NGOs, Iranians was really highly laudable and appreciable. They must have earned great sawab by the God almighty.
On the day of chelum we went in jhaloos form all the way to harms of Ghazi Abbas and Mola Hussain a. s. till we reached to khammagaha, tilla e zainabia which is under construction and was covered with tin walls. Nobody was allowed to reach only ziaraat from distance was allowed for the Zaireen
Rehana Bokhari
From Kerbala.
