ASHURA: THE BLOODY FRENZY OF GRIEF

Ya! Ya! Husayn! Ya! Ya! Husayn!`

The procession approaches where Mehdi and I stand outside a bank which has its shutters down. Normally Bunder Road bustles with buses, cars and camel carts going to and from the harbour, but today the street is sealed off and is thronged with thousands of people, wearing black, the sign of mourning.

The occasion is Ashura, the tenth of Muharram (the first month in the Islamic calendar) when devout Shi`a Muslims remember the martyrdom of Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet, at Kerbala, in AD 680. A tall, young doctor working at Karachi Eye Hospital, Mehdi has agreed to accompany me, but although a Shi`a Muslim, he does not participate in the frenzied manifestations.

As the shouting intensifies, a white stallion splashed with red dye and prancing like one of the famous Lipizzaner horses at the Spanish School in Vienna, appears at the head of the marchers. It symbolises Zuljana, Husayn`s trusted steed, which returned alone from the battleground on the banks of the Euphrates, after his master was slain: ( it is said those who found the horse swore it had tears rolling down its face).

`Ya! Ya! Husayn`!

Now I can see the first marchers slashing their backs with small finger knives attached to chains. Swish! Swish! The blades whistle through the air, but there are no cries of pain: this is the point, Husayn had suffered for Islam, so what`s a few slashes between true believers?

As the procession draws level, I watch in horror as the marchers whirl about lacerating their naked torsos. An intense youth rakes his back spattering my Armani shirt with spots of blood: his own baggy trousers are saturated.

Mehdi looks uncomfortable at the self inflicted wounds. For days the local press has urged people not to get too emotive, but the Red Crescent tents set up along Bunder Road are tending scores of walking wounded.

I manage to photograph dressers, stitching a nine inch gap in someone`s back, before soldiers hustle me away...

Excerpt from: Travels With My Hat: by Christine Osborne for publication in 2010

Images: www.worldreligions.co.uk

Photography: N.Roberts and C.Osborne

Muharram 2009 will begin on 18th December.

SUDANESE WOMEN WHIPPED FOR WEARING TROUSERS

In 1993, I was invited to a WTO conference in Bali, but was refused admission at the door because I was wearing trousers. Not just any old pair of trousers, but a fashionable trouser suit. As a result I did not attend at all, because I had brought no dresses on the long flight from London.

Now I`m appalled to learn that the well known Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein is to be flogged for wearing trousers in a restaurant in Khartoum. And that women whipped earlier this month included some from the animist and Christian south where the Muslim north's sharia law does not apply.

Sudan is not high on most lists as a holiday destination, but potential women visitors should take heed. Remember, too, the British teacher Gillian Gibbons, arrested in 2007 for calling a toy bear Muhammad.

Is it any wonder that regimes such as that of dictator Oman al-Bashir give Islam a bad name?

His own punishment should be to be brought forcibly to London to see the shortest of shorts being worn this summer. Perhaps he would suffer a heart attack when the world would have one criminal less.

More power to your arm Ms.al-Hussain. I shall watch your trial with interest and wish you all the best.

c.Christine Osborne: former editor Two Niles/Sudan Airways flight magazine.

Image: Scene in Omdurman, Sudan

Source: www.copix.co.uk

THE MAN FROM SUDAN

I came home on the bus this morning with a man from the Sudan.

I had seen him many times, herding long-horned cattle, or playing an oud with long fingers that now clutched a cheap plastic briefcase. And clearly he did not know where to go.

`Can I help?` I said, touching his elbow gently.

I noticed a trace of orange henna at his temples, as he turned towards me. Many Muslims dye their beard with henna when they have performed the hajj. His beard has been shaved off, but the trace of henna and the zebiba (prayer mark) on his forehead, tells me he is a good Muslim. A good Muslim with one wonky eye.

`Clapham Common,` he said in an almost panicky voice, bending down, all six feet six of him, to look anxiously out of the window as we crossed Vauxhall bridge.

`Yallah,` I said getting off at the inter-change. But he was far too concerned about Clapham Common to realise that a strange `English` woman had uttered a word of Arabic in the heart of Vauxhall.

`Bus 88 Clapham Common, over there!` I tell him.

`Thanks you much!` he said, evidently knowing the way.

I watched him hurrying along the road in his new brown leather shoes until he disappeared on a traffic crossing and was out of sight.

It could have been me, a thousand times over, struggling to find my way around Sana`a, Salalah or Khartoum.

c.Christine Osborne

Image: Prayer by the Blue Nile, Sudan

Source: Liam White: www.worldreligions.co.uk