The Damascus Road

This road is well travelled,
Saul became Paul here
Struck off his horse
Overcome with awe and fear.
The Baptist’s head came this way
Hung, possibly, like Abbas
In the bridle of a rider,
Ashamed as his Sisters pass.


This is the Pilgrim’s road
Where Baheera’s people file,
Symbols and incense swinging
But their icons are crying too,
As they cross the dispossessed
And the candles lose their wick,
The choirs’ hushed of voice
Faced with the suffering sick


And wasn’t this ancient road,
Path of all those Prophets?
Ask if it has seen such pilgrims
Cower under constant cruel threats
Led by a shattered slip of a soul
Ask Abraham if he could see
This scourging of innocence
Ask Yaqoob how blind he would be.


This will become the Pilgrims’ road
With each scrape of shackle and chain,
With each whip crack and slap,
With bleeding cut and sweat stain
That we will walk in our minds
Because this road will claim
Suqqaina’s life, and Zainab’s hope.
This is a Hajj, we do in Sajjad’s name.


By Ali. A. Naqvi

Notes:
I think I may need to add some context to some of the imagery.

1) The road to Damascus, in English is a metaphor for transformative change and repentance.

2) The most evident example of this is the Saul , who chief persecutor of Christians, who the changed to Paul after "seeing the light" - which is also where the metaphor comes from. From the New Testament:

"And as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew nigh unto Damascus: and suddenly there shone round about him a light out of heaven: and he fell upon the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? .....And Saul arose .... his eyes were opened..and they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus...".— Acts 9:3–9

3) The Damasucs road and the road to Nineveh feature prominently in the journeys of various Prophets in the Torah and the Quran.

4) Byzantine Christians, and probably Baheera's people used the same route to go on Pilgrimage accross the Middle East. a comment pilgrims procession had singing , Iconography - sometimes miracles of Weeping Saints/Mary and incense burners carried with it. This is the reference to Baheera's people

5) According to Shia Hadith , every Prophet that crosses the path to Nineveh/Iraq feel a great sadness and torment when doing so and is the told about what is to unfold at Kerbala with the murder of Hussain.

6) Both Abraham and Yaqoob ( Jacob) had to undergo sacrifices that meant watching their loved ones suffer, or great loss, in all Abrahamic traditions. In Islamic tradition Yaqoob goes blind with weeping because of the loss of one son - Ali Ibnal Hussain is quoted as replying to followers who wantd to know when he would stop mourning his loss "You are being unjust - Yaqoob lost his sight becuase he lost one son and the son was returned. We have lost almost all our sons and they were not returned to us."

Sughra Watches

So Sughra, what do you strain for

Perched on the walls watching,

Slowly rubbing your feet sore

As you kick away the frustration?

Those crows will not become flags.

Those Jinn spinning dust in the sands,

That straining beast laden with bags,

Don’t belong to your caravan

I see you crane that trembling frame,

Squinting at blots on the horizon,

Stuck to the sides in pain,

Drawn out by longing.

What will you do Sughra,

When that grand caravan

Withers back to you

Shorn of its glories like a shell

With its pearl shaken out?

What will you do Sughra,

When you find bosoms empty

And grooms ground dead,

Leaving widows that sway

As the black swallows them?

What will you do Sughra

When you run from old face

To old face, aged by fear

Looking for a brother to place

His powerful arms around you?

What will you do Sughra

When all those dreams you waxed,

Wane into horror as you search

For a father left desolate

And desecrated in the desert?

What will you do Sughra,

When you see the rope burn,

The collars’ brand on the flesh

And the stoops of so many

Broken backs shuffling slowly forward?

What will you do Sughra,

When you find no cradle,

No prattle from toddlers,

No four year old sister,

Only mothers stuttering in the sun?

Look no more Sughra,

There is no caravan today,

It lies burnt in the far far

Furnace of Nineveh.

Look no more, as even now,

Removed from your imminence

I, Sadiq, know not how

I can see it myself.

By Ali. A. Naqvi

Suqqania’s Walk.

Do we know your walk,

Through the shift in years,

Through the rotation of fable

Through the constant listening?

Do we know your walk,

When we see our little ones

When we see them scuff along

Happy in the world we build them?

Do we know your walk,

With the torn ears

And the tattered hair

And broken little hands?

Do we know your walk,

That awe curating walk

From your father's chest

To the floor of your cell?

We know not, but we hear it,

Your little steps into ourselves.

That we could forget,

Would be a crime against memory.

by Ali. A. Naqvi

The Zainabiyah

This is the Zainabiyah.

I

Dull drumbeat days

Poured orange and black

Dripping days of rope burn

And sweat

The shamed beast carrying her

Low drooped lips scuffing groundward

And grief rolls behind her eyes

Keep itself within itself

Blows have made it so

II

This tyrant is young like a tack

Grown from poison and blooming hate

This tyrant, sinew and Syrian wine,

Sways with his chemicals and growls

Victory, he says, vengeance

This Book, This Quran, Play things

Of his and the olden tribes

And he snaps in to a stoop

To mock the fallen head

Of her brother, Of Hussain.

She thinks of The Baptist

Snug in his covered mound

See, they put your head on a platter

And The Baptist seems to sigh and turn.

III

There is not much left of him but trembling

Master of the weight of Shadow

Nothing more than a line of a man

Grasped by thorned collar and hot shackles

Sometimes she sees her brothers smile

But it’s just the pressure of the silence

Or the fever, or the lapse into sleep

She wonders which lights of heaven he sees

But knows it will be nights of blood he feels

As the women huddle, secret sobs sifting

The dark and the dust, each holding onto herself

As if that, too, would be taken next.

IV

As the waif points to the birds and asks

Where they went, Zainab does not want to answer

But Suqqiana has a strength,

She know now not to cry,

Even when tested by the Tyrant,

Those little hands cradling her father’s head

While he sneers with joy teetering on his seat.

Suqqaina’s eyes, though always brim,

Know now the rote reality of these days

So, pausing, Zainab says they go home

And the little head nods and ask when

They would go home, and the women keen.

V

The drag through another souk

The noise has become a drone

Faces have become old wax

All that remains is the procession

Arrayed spears bearing her love

In her father’s time they had borne

Torn pieces of the Quran like this

So now they hold those it praised

But he had told her to be strong

Have patience Zainab, so she did

Her father’s daughter, hidden by her hair

Bound, crumbling, but still strong.

VI

The girl sleeps but Zainab won’t wake her

Those tired arms, wanting so much,

Yearning so much for her father.

She only slept this well on her father’s chest

And Zainab knows that she will not wake

But there is this moment of peace

Before she turns to Ali Ibn Hussain

VII

Layla will not seek the shade

She finds a shaft of sunlight and sits

Rocking and rocking and her eyes lock.

In the sun, she says, in the sun,

They left my hope, my love, there.

Zainab touches he arm, but there is only

The sun.

VIII

When they all sleep, when she can be,

She holds her greying hair in her hands

What will she tell them at home?

That she left with a household

And she came back in tatters?

How will she fill the spaces

Once bustling and bursting?

She sees the women begin to stir

So she sits a little straighter

Remmember Zainab, be strong, he said

IX

The Tyrant must do his want

Into the court he hauls the women

Zainab, suffers the shove and prod

As chain pulls chain into chain

Ali Ibn al Hussain bent double

Aging before her into his duty

The tyrant is drunk, again.

He rolls in his seat, and slumps.

She wonders why these great men

Perch and watch each other so.

The tyrant makes a joke

They pause, breath and laugh.

The Roman comes forward with a letter

The Tyrant leers at him and nods.

See my conquests, he boasts

He has taken that which is his

The Roman looks at the head

“Had we the descendant of Jesus

We would be glorifying him”

The Tyrant order his death

The Roman smiles, Zainab knows

He came, this day, for redemption.

X

Layla sits where she burns,

She had son, she says

Out there, on the sand

Half a spear stuck in his heart

She had a son, she sobs

Black curls and eyes of moonlight,

Strong, powerful, joy of the world

She had a Son, and he rode

Like the breakers near Shiraz

And when he read aloud

Atoms would listen

She had a son, but now she burns.

XI

She is strong. Zainab rises.

Her voice begins to grow

Gentle at first, finding its roots

The out, full, into the air

Gathering her father’s power

Her brother’s force

And shatters the court

“God will deal with you. The Messenger

Of God is your resistance and Gabriel our support”

The Tyrant totters, unsure

She turns his certainty and he is lost.

He grasps for the death warrant

But others have his hands now.

XII

They have taken Ali Ibn Hussain away,

Zainab grips her shoulders, holds the rope,

Not her last son, the one light left.

Stay strong, he said. Hussain said,

As he tore his own clothes,

Set his sword, sighed and stood,

Stay strong, this day’s end I hand to you.

So, suffer the things to come, as I can’t.

Ali Ibnal Hussain returns, he stands a little better,

Be strong Zainab, because that’s what will win.

XII

This is the Tyrant’s house,

Paths of old prophets buried

Under the silt of the nihilists

But not today, not this day

As the Rooks of sorrow

Wash into this house.

This is the Tyrant’s house

And Zainab makes it a sanctuary

And here Zainab will cry

But the grief wallows

Quivering deep under the abuse

Used to whips holding it down

It does not know what to do

It needs reminders.

So they come, carried with care.

Each head pulls out shrieks

As each finds its heart,

But Zainab is numb,

Hussien in her arms.

Someone calls out to her

“There are two here unclaimed,

Did the mother of these children pass?”

And the grief remembers

And becomes Zainab.

Zainab Calling

Those five timed salutes,

Up and down submission

That meter your life

That you say all is based on

Came to you epigentically,

Of a woman’s loss and pain

Of a caravan burnt and robbed

Of ravaging and chains

Now, you stride the world,

Muscles, beard, gun and glory

Raising your hands in praise

Of the words you thought you knew

Waving honour around

Telling us what a woman’s place is.

And in the Ten Nights we remember that:

In those dark days, in Syrian prisons

In the markets of Kufa,

When the whips worked,

When there was no Hijab from the sun

They preserved The Word

Under each strand of tattered hair

These lessons are never lost,

If forgotten.

By

Ali Naqvi

Zohair. Standing.

I live in second sight during these days

This what you’ve made of me, Saqi

I trudge the morning but walk the ways

Of the wounded after dusk

I drift in sulks and soft sobs

Bones here, mind elsewhere

Watching them rage and rob

Letting arrows chalk through me

And down onto your sons, Saqi

And into steady Zohair Al Qain

Ground in like a tree

Pouring his love out of each cut

I live in second sight, Saqi

For you have made me like this

Constant keener of your legacy

And I keep flitting between

These lessons in pure living

And this grinding reality

Where, without love, things are dying.

By Ali.A.Naqvi

Grief: Teller of Tales.

The whispers layered into our days,

Pulse memories out from lost moments

These are our sources of woe

Hooked out every year to mix

With the well spring of these days

Coaxed out by the retelling

Thus, Saqi, we grieve by reliving

But, who is he that rides down grief

Finds it recoiling from its own fate

Wrestles it down and forms it,

As raconteur of his strickening saga?

Who is he, that knowing what will pass,

Feels his brother’s life fall leagues away,

And still, gathers up his heart

Casting it to the mercy of those without it?

Who is he that would deny himself Hajj,

Yet Hajj would deny me without him?

Who is this Hussain, heaving his caravan to a halt

While the Muharram moon locks step?

By Ali.A.Naqvi

Muharram Moon

A Chador-Shrouded solstice this year

A confluence of the gravity-dance

Mixing gunpowder and tears

Tugging at gaps in the memory

A voice here, flat tones of the keening

A shadow here, a way of standing

A couplet here, subliminal, yearning.

This is supposed to be epoch on the rise

This crossing of streams, of decades

But that’s for the Seers and the wise

I just write memoirs in the twisted wool

by Ali.A.Naqvi (2009)