I wrote the following poem in response to our readings about Taziyeh ritual theatre. I noticed connections between the ritualized sense of victimhood for Shii Muslims in Taziyeh and the sense of victimhood that gets ritualized in Passover Seders, Israeli holocaust Memorial Day, the Ground Zero memorial in New York City, and many other ritualized memorials. This connection led me to wonder about the Iranian Shii tradition of Taziyeh theatre, especially because it seems to be such an exaggerated and dramatized experience where the audience is intentionally made to cry and feel as if they are experiencing trauma and persecution all over again.
____________________________________________________________
Grieve for the umpteenth time
Through rituals that memorialize our past.
Feel the pain as if it happened this morning
As if Qasem, son of Imam Hassan, just left for the battlefield
And surrendered himself to martyrdom
His blood leaking into your shirt,
down your mouth, and into your heart.
Weep like Qasem’s mother
Cry as a Shia nation, victimized by the Sunni world
Feel as if you are getting stung by the whip of of King Pharaoh
Or as if you are being marched to a concentration camp
Or as if the news of hijacked planes just reached your television screen
Taste the bitterness of slavery
Moan as the world crucifies your people
Year after year after year after year after year after year after year.
What are these memories?
Are they ever even really there, as historical events?
Can we take them out like folders in a cabinet and look at them?
Year after year after year after year after year after year after year.
We take these memories out of their cabinets and wipe our tears and blood on them.
And then the next year we see the tears and blood and we shed even more tears and lose even more blood.
Until the memory is nothing but a blood-drenched, tear-soaked pain.
Pain.
Victimhood.
The world is out to get us.
And we will never forget.
But it is in this act of never forgetting that we create anew.
We create something every time we remember.
We create pain
We create fear of the other
We create alienation, and mistrust, and belief in martyrdom
We create nationalism – a persecuted people.
Israel
Shia
America
Let us be aware of what we create.
Let us remember the pain and also remember to love
Let us remember our trauma while striving for better
Let us feel fear and challenge ourselves to imagine how the other side feels as well
Let us be present, in the Taziyeh ritual, feeling what it must have been like
While also being present in this world, aware of what it does feel like and what it will feel like.
Let us attempt to heal our traumas, not redramatize them.